Online shoppers do not base their buying decisions on single factors, such as price or whether or not they like your web design. Instead, much research is showing that buyers are using what might be called an "holistic" approach. In other words they are taking into account a range of different factors all at the same time. In psychology this is termed "Gestalt" and is based on ideas from the 19th Century Austrian philosopher, Christian von Ehrenfels. What he and his colleagues did was to suggest that we perceive the world around us by understanding things as a whole, rather than the individual parts.

A good way of seeing what is meant is to look at the black and white image on the right. Most people can see a Dalmatian dog sniffing the ground. However, no dog has actually been drawn. The drawing is merely a collection of black splodges. Our brain assembles those black splodges and attempts to make meaning from all of them, resulting in our brains convincing us there is a dog there. Now, it's true that there are criticisms of Gestalt theory, but there is clearly something in it.

And new information on the way people buy online from Strathclyde Business School suggests that we do indeed take a "whole" account of web shops. Online retailers provide us with an array of different cues to help us. There are categories, price tags, colour codes, pictures, shopping cart buttons, guarantees - the list goes on and on. Take a look at any reasonable online shop and you will see a plethora of signals to help us decide to buy.

But what this new study confirms is that we take all of these signals together - not as individual parts. We don't say "aha, that's good, there's the shopping cart button" and then move on to analyse whether or not the terms and conditions are acceptable. We do all of that assessment in one go.

What this implies is that we need to present our signals that encourage purchasing in a way that makes it quick and easy for the Gestalt process to work. In other words, if you complicate your online shop's signals, you make it less likely that people will buy anything because getting the whole picture is more difficult. Imagine the Dalmatian dog image with more dots and different coloured dots.

Research has confirmed there are three broad areas that online retailers need to concentrate on if the holistic impression is to get through to shoppers.

1. Ease of understanding: Your web site and the processes you offer must be easily understood. This means if your shopping process cannot be used by a child, you are not doing well enough. You might not be aiming at children, of course, but if they can understand the buying process or what you have to offer you will do well with adults. Far too many online shops are only usable by tech-savvy experts, often with a degree in engineering. Think of Amazon's One Click buying process - simple, one click and you've bought it.

2. Informativeness: People need all of the information that helps them make their buying decision in one place. Shops that only give cursory, brief details don't allow the "big picture" to be built up. Again, think of Amazon. Each product has an image, details of the book's contents, further information from the publishers and reviews from readers all in one place. No information from the publisher? Guess what, you can't build up the complete picture of what you might be buying. No reviews from the readers? Again you are not sure about things because you can't complete the information you need to create that overall view of things.

3. Involvement: We need to be involved in order to help us get everything. High Street stores do this by allowing us to pick things up and touch them, feel them, absorb their qualities. Even if a shop doesn't let us do that, like Argos, we get involved - there is actually no real need to pick up a little pen and fill in a tiny slip of paper and then take it to the counter, but it is involvement. Online, we like to be involved so we can feel part of the process. Once again, Amazon gets this - we can review books, create our own wish lists and so on. None of that is directly necessary in book purchasing, but it helps us feel involved and that aids the Gestalt process of completing the big picture.

So on your web site if you are selling stuff you need to consider these principles. How easy is your web site to understand and to use? How informative is your product information? How much involvement do your buyers get?  If you can move towards ensuring your online shop is easy to use, is highly informative and has good levels of involvement you will find that people can more easily get the big picture about what you sell. And once they get that they are much more likely to buy. In the same way, if you see the Dalmatian dog, the picture is a complete whole that is easy to deal with; if you only see black splodges you get confused and stop looking. Don't let your online shop be an array of black splodges.

Shoppers are never the same; anyone involved in retail knows that everyone is different. What appeals to one person, does not attract another. What some people see as a bargain, others find too expensive. What some people buy every week, others only get occasionally. It never ceases to amaze shop owners how different their customers can be.

Traditional, High Street, retailers try to appeal to a particular "class" of shopper; the person who loves shopping at a giant, like Tesco, is probably not that happy with going to separate shops like a butcher, a greengrocer and a baker. But the person who loves their local butcher's shop, probably never even ventures down the meat aisle in Sainsbury. Traditional retailers know they can't appeal to everyone, so they plump for a sector or "market segment".

Online, though, things are different. You don't see online shops attempting to segment themselves in such obvious ways. In fact, most online retailing looks and feels the same. There's an array of products, perhaps separated by category, an add to shopping cart button and then a checkout. However, new research from the University of South Carolina suggests that online retailers could be taking the wrong approach in doing this.

The study found that our shopping requirements are based around our level of "expertise" on a subject. So, for instance, someone who has good levels of knowledge about fresh fruit and vegetables is much happier to buy from a haphazard farmers market than the category-style display in a supermarket. The more you know about a subject, it seems, the less you want the shop to be in categories - and the more you want to be surprised by things.

Most online shops are geared, it seems, towards the uninitiated - the novice. Everything is in categories, grouped logically and presented in an obvious order. However, this new study suggests this could actually put off a considerable number of your potential purchasers - those who know and understand your subject area.

It's more evidence of the need to split what you provide online. Even if you have a niche website, it may well be that you need to divide the shop you provide into two - one presented for novices and one for your expert shoppers. Doing so could well provide increased sales from an online store. Categories may well help navigation, but they may put off the shoppers who know your subject area (and may therefore be more likely to spend anyway). Online retail needs a different approach.

Online retailers are failing to focus on two key issues which are persistent barriers to internet shoppers. A new study of online buyers has found that taken together these two issues are stopping more than half the people who use the internet from buying anything online. We may well have seen a Christmas bonanza online in the past few days, but it is nothing compared with what might be possible if online retailers really got their act together.

The new research from the usability experts Foviance shows that people are put off buying items online because they want to touch and feel what they are buying. Furthermore, people are also avoiding online buying because they don't like being charged for delivery.

We live in a three dimensional, physical world. Our experiences come from our interactions within those three dimensions. It means that we value physicality - it becomes important to us because it helps us understand things more easily. People find it much easier, for instance, to part with money on a credit card than they do with real, hard, cash. That's because the intangibility of credit card money makes it difficult for us to be sure how much money we are spending - and we get it wrong as a result. With cash in our pocket it is much easier to budget because we can physically engage with what we have available. All those predictions of a cashless society are so, so wrong.

Similarly, we like to touch and feel products we are buying to work out their value. For instance, I could sell you something as simple as a book - something we all have experience of. But you value books more if the paper is of a certain quality, if the cover has a shiny feel or a three dimensional nature, or if it feels heavy. Online bookshops can tell you the dimensions and say things like "printed on quality paper"...but what does that really mean? To find out you need to feel it - and that's why, still, most books are sold in physical stores (not online).

The success of Amazon or other online retailers is, of course, not to be sneezed at. Yet they are effectively only scratching the surface of what's possible. So what can they do to help us be more likely to buy? Well, for a start, they can scrap delivery charges. Free delivery will make a significant difference - according to the Foviance study potentially increasing sales by around 18%. But they can also look at making their experience physical in some way.

Amazon may be about to do this - though they are denying rumours of starting High Street stores (even though Borders could be snapped up cheaply at the moment...!). However, many online retailers need to address the physicality issue in order to improve sales. Dell, for instance, has boutiques in shopping malls in the USA where you can try out all the different PCs and then order one online for home delivery. Zappos, the shoe store, provides a service that is effectively "try then buy", allowing people to get shoes delivered free of charge and then returned without payment if they don't fit or if you don't like them. This allows people to get the physical experience of the shoes they are buying.

Scientists at the University of Buffalo have already been able to transmit the sense of touch across the internet, which means there is the opportunity for online retailers to construct web sites, for instance, where we will be able to feel the clothes we want to buy. Other scientific work going on a the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for visually impaired people is also providing methods of getting a physical experience from the two-dimensional world of the internet. Ultimately, we will be able to experience physically products we want to buy online.

In the meantime, anyone selling products online needs to be creative and communicate physicality more. Instead of saying things like "printed on quality paper" you might say "when you pick up this book the thickness of the paper makes it feel like virgin parchment". Physical language could well help sell more online.

But if you sell products online you need to address the two key issues preventing you from selling more - physicality and delivery. Scrap those delivery charges and increase the physical experience in some way and there's every chance your sales will shoot up.

As you sit at your computer reading this, tens of thousands of people are shopping online. Indeed, today it is expected that at its peak online shopping will reach a whopping £4,000 per second. Shoppers are likely to be parting with an amazing £350m online today. But why? Why are they saving it all up for today? And what is attracting people to spend tons of cash online, instead of visiting those bright and cheery High Street stores?

It's true that the web is a convenient place to shop - no parking queues, no wandering around in the wind and rain - so that helps. But equally, one in three people who use the internet simply refuse to shop online because they don't trust the payment systems available. It's also true that often there is a wider selection of items to buy online than you might find in a traditional store. And the prices are often cheaper online too. So, in spite of the worries about fraud or identity theft, there are some powerful reasons why people prefer online shopping.

But why today? Well, a couple of practical things combine. Most people get paid at the end of the month; that always results in increased footfall in bricks and mortar stores in the weekend after people get their pay (the weekend just gone). Plus, today is the first day back at work for many people after the "shopping weekend" we've just had. It means that those people who only access broadband internet in their office or workplace are likely to shop for those items online today that they couldn't find in the shops yesterday. There is another pressure for shopping online today as well - delivery times. With only two and a half delivery weeks left, people are keen to ensure that their online purchases get delivered in time for Christmas.

Having said all this, there is something far more important driving the online shopping binge today. That's social pressure. The notion that today will be a "Cyber Monday" is, of course, only a guess. It's a guess that all the major retailers are happy to sign up to because it means they can send out press releases all about their special Cyber Monday deals. The result is mass media coverage of an "event" that might or might not be real. Because "everyone is talking about it", we then feel today is the day; we get sucked in to the chit-chat about it and even if we had no plans to shop online today, there's an increased chance.

The retailers will then be able to produce statistics to show that their predictions were right after all. "Goodness me," they'll say, "everyone did shop on that Cyber Monday." But it may well be we only did our online shopping today because there was so much media coverage saying today is the day to go buying online. In other words, we did the socially acceptable thing.

This is an important concept. We see it in the current debate about climate change. If you don't do the socially acceptable thing and recycle, simply accepting that the climate has changed because of human beings, then you are frowned upon as though you have lost your senses. We all fall into line, because to do otherwise is to get yourself criticised or even hounded by the media as though you are some kind of weirdo. The truth is, though, human beings simply love to think they are in control of everything and are at the centre of all things. It took the human race centuries to finally come to terms with the fact that the Earth was not the centre of the Universe after all. It may well take as long for humanity to realise that climate is much bigger than us and that our contribution to that change is negligible at best.  Gosh, I've said something socially unacceptable; what will you think of me?

And that's the point - we all strive to be socially acceptable and stick to the party line. It means if you run an online business all you need to do is generate enough "word of mouth" about the need for your products and services and it will become socially unacceptable for your potential marketplace not to buy. Don't neglect the power of social acceptability for your products and services. It is a powerful tool.

So, Borders has gone into administration in the UK after a dreadful trading period.  Apparently they have "cash flow" problems meaning they are potentially unable to meet their financial demands. According to several reports, it's the internet's fault. But this simply is not true. Nine out of ten books bought in the UK are bought in physical stores - NOT online. People often like to find something else to blame - other than themselves.

Let's take a look at Borders - and other book retailers. Back in 1971 when the Borders brothers opened their first store in Ann Arbor, Michigan, it offered - well, er, books on shelves. Now, almost 40 years later Borders offers, er, books on shelves. OK, you might say they are a book store, what else are they supposed to do? Well, for a start they might have responded to the way people behave...!

For instance, the university students who set up Borders were aiming initially at an academic market. In this, people often know the name of the author they want; largely they are told by lecturers to get the set books by particular authors. The result is that students go into bookstores looking for a specific author. No surprise then that many bookshops arrange books alphabetically by author's surname. But that only works if you already know the name of the person you want....! Academics might know, but the rest of us don't.

Of course, until the advent of the internet, that's all we had - we knew no different. All bookshops worked in the same basic way - and many still do. The result is that we research what we need online and then go to the bookstore to get the specific author having found out who we want using Google or Amazon. Remember, many people will not buy online due to lack of trust in the financial systems on the internet. They are happy to research online and then buy in physical stores where there is a greater degree of trust.

When you do go to a bookshop with your online research in mind, you probably find the book is out of stock. So, they can order it for you. Then you wait a week or two and then have to go back to the shop to collect it. What kind of madness is this when on-demand printing of books has been commercially viable for over a decade? And besides if you can't find the book you want in a typical bookshop, you have to go to find someone at the "book orders" desk (frequently not staffed) and then wait patiently while they go through several options before eventually telling you it is out of stock. Argos has had machines that can check stock in seconds on tables around their stores for many, many years.

What the Borders situation tells us is the fact that the book industry is still operating with the attitudes of a Dickensian business. They really haven't moved out of the 19th Century yet. They are slow to respond to consumer change and seem to spend more of their time complaining than getting on and doing anything about it. The book industry is full of people bleating on about the Internet. Borders themselves had an online store - but did they do what they needed? Probably not; they seemingly did little in response to Amazon. They set up shop and that was about it. Where was the online innovation (like Amazon's)? Where was the online marketing push? Where was the focus on using the internet to boost all aspects of their business?

The book industry has its head in the sand - not over the internet, but over the way the world has changed. The demise of Borders is not a signal that the internet is doing the industry harm. Instead it shows us that the industry's own worst enemy are the people within it.

Do you want to sell more from your website? OK, silly question, I know. But one of the difficulties anyone selling stuff online has is that they cannot really control the sales environment. People tend to buy more when they are comfortable. But your sales environment might be someone's office, their bedroom, an airport lounge or a busy train. Selling your products and services on the internet is much more difficult than in the real world because you cannot control the variable environments of your purchasers.

In a physical store they can manipulate the lighting, the temperature and the overall ambiance to make you feel more amenable to buying something. Successful shops go to a great deal of effort to get the environment right to sell their particular type of products. Butchers, for instance, can invest in lighting that brings out the redness of meat, making it more acceptable to us. Clothing shops can invest in heating that makes us feel especially warm and thereby more likely to buy new clothes. Now, new research published in the Journal of Consumer Research shows that whether we are standing on carpet or vinyl flooring can also impact our desire to buy.

It's a complicated study looking at several different variables, but essentially it points to the fact that we are more likely to buy if we can see the product clearly and easily. Whilst carpet did have an effect making us feel more comfortable and more likely to buy something, this was reduced if the product was at a distance. In other words, our comfort levels only have an impact on our purchasing if we can see the product clearly.

Online, this means you can easily overcome the variety of environments in which you sell. You need to make it really easy for people to see what you are selling. That suggests 360 degree videos or several images to show the product from all angles. It also means being able to view the product in enlarged format pictures, allowing people to zoom in an out of any area they want. In addition, it suggests having a variety of images of the product in particular formats - such as colour variations - so that people get a clear view of what you are selling.

You cannot change the environment in which your potential purchaser is making that buying decision. But you can improve the clarity of what you are selling by using more and better pictures, as well as videos of the product. This will compensate for any negatives in the buyer's environment.

In the same way, some physical stores would prefer to have carpet than vinyl, but can't do so for practical reasons. This new study suggests that they can overcome the increased comfort of carpet by ensuring their products have excellent visibility. In other words, people want to see what they are buying.

Your local postie is dong you a favour if you are in online retail. Every day their cheery face brightens your morning as you open the door to be handed your letters and parcels. They have been an essential part of the UK community for over a century. Yet their impending strike is threatening many businesses - online retailers in particular who depend upon the Royal Mail for their deliveries.

This comes at a time when internet shopping is already being put under pressure by the High Street, which is currently eating in to the sales made by the online world. A postal strike merely reduces the confidence of buyers as they are not sure if their goods will be delivered. So, many shoppers are returning to the bricks and mortar stores to get their goods, rather than worry whether or not their online shopping will be delivered.

Internet retailers are responding by falling back on contingency plans to use courier firms and other delivery companies. However, on BBC Breakfast this morning the Newbury-based costume retailer, Jokers Masquerade, revealed that the last time there was a strike their additional delivery costs were £47,000. Clearly the Royal Mail either provides excellent value for money, or has consistently been too cheap compared with other ways of delivering items.

Yet, whatever the online retailers do this strike reveals one other thing. It shows that Internet shops are not thinking deeply enough about delivery mechanisms. All they are considering doing is replacing one door-to-door system, the Royal Mail, with another that is essentially the same, such as CityLink. This might help overcome distribution difficulties during the strike, but is hardly a creative solution.

People lead extraordinary lives these days. Instead of going to work just a few miles away and being home at 5pm, tea on the table, millions of people travel large distances often to different places each day. We are a hugely mobile society with working patterns that are varied. Equally, gone are the days when there was always someone at home to take in a parcel. Delivering to people's homes 9 to 5 is  no longer an option.

Companies like Amazon realised this a while ago and offer delivery to alternative addresses, even multiple addresses for the same order. Tesco, too, know that you are not always in during the day and will deliver very early in the morning or late at night. But these are still based on the notion that delivery means getting it to your home.

In reality, delivery is about getting to to you - wherever you may be. The postal strike should provoke online retailers into considering other ways of getting their goods to you, rather than merely replacing the Royal Mail with a directly comparable alternative. After all, delivery companies have GPS in their vans and many people have GPS in their mobile phones. That means it is perfectly possible for delivery drivers to pinpoint you exactly and deliver straight to you. They could also set up a locker-based system at motorway service stations, protected by pin codes. Your parcels are delivered to your locker and you pop in to the services on your way to work and collect your items.

There are dozens of other ways of delivering goods to people, yet what this strike is doing is merely getting online retailers to think of replacing one tired old fashioned system with another. If you sell items that are delivered directly to people, it's time to put your thinking cap on. It looks like the striking postal workers have not actually caused a problem for online retailers at all; instead it is entirely possible this could be the trigger for creative thinking that brings about brand new delivery solutions that make online buyers happier.