Why have online retail sales flatlined?

I’m really quite curious about what is happening in Australia’s supposedly tearaway growth sector, online retail. Growth has literally crashed in the past twelve months and shows little sign of bouncing back. From NAB today:

• In the 12 months to May 2014, Australians spent $15.3 billion on online retail. This level is equivalent to 6.6% of spending at traditional bricks & mortar retailers as measured by the ABS (excluding cafés, restaurants and takeaway food, to create a like-for-like comparison) in the 12 months to April 2014.
• The NAB Online Retail Sales Index grew by 0.2% in May, after a small decline in April. Compared to a year ago, the online index is 5.1% higher.
• Comparable sales growth at traditional retailers also slowed in April, to be at 0.1%, compared to 0.4% in March.
• The key drivers of the index have behaved quite differently this month. Groceries & Liquor and Electronic Games & Toys continued their strength from the previous month. On the other hand, Fashion, Department & Variety Stores and Homeware & Appliances have seen a weakened growth.
• Growth in Media has continued to drop, and has now fallen to its lowest level in history. Daily Deals and Personal & Recreational Goods experienced negative growth again this month.

We can probably put some of the stall down to the falling Australian dollar, which suggests that at least some of the pre-Budget bounce in retail sales was more about cycling back into local stores than just confidence.

Certainly it’s got something to do with retail dinosaurs flopping around online with sub-par websites.

But the stall is so unusual that I can’t help feeling that I’m missing something. Interested in reader’s thoughts.