The proportion of Australians ordering take-away food online has surged, rising from 36 per cent to 47 per cent among those who made internet purchases last year, as the convenience of ordering meals on their smartphone drives people away from the kitchen, according to the 2017 Sensis eBusiness Report.

Sensis Digital Manager, Alice Mentiplay said: “Only a few years ago ordering take-away food meant flicking through a bunch of old menus, phoning through an order to a noisy restaurant, then sitting in hope that the food would eventually turn up and you’d get what you asked for. Intense competition has changed the industry and people can now order their meal in a couple of touches on their smartphone and track its delivery right to their door.

“We all know that it can be exhausting cooking after a long day at work, or a big night out with family or friends. The growth in food apps such as UberEats is driving more people to ditch cooking for the convenience of take-away delivered to the dinner table or couch.

“Office workers and commuters are even jumping the queue when ordering their morning coffee or lunch on the run, with apps like Skip saving precious time as people’s tolerance for waiting has hit rock bottom,” she said.

Driving the change is the rise in smartphone ownership (up from 78 per cent to 82 per cent), with the smartphone overtaking the computer as the most common device to access the internet for the first time this year (79 per cent vs 71 per cent).

The 2017 study from digital expert Sensis surveyed 800 Australian consumers and 1002 small and medium businesses about their online experiences and found that women are the shopaholics online, with 60 per cent making internet purchases versus only 51 per cent of men over the past year.

Conversely men spend more than women ($3450 versus $2900) with gender stereotypes playing out in what they are purchasing. The survey did find that both men and women were more frugal online this year, with the average spend down from $3300 to $3150.

“Purchasing behaviours might be changing but stereotypes appear here to stay. Men were almost twice as likely to buy electronic equipment online, while women were more than twice as likely to order cosmetics and also lead in purchasing clothing, shoes, and doing the grocery shopping,” said Mrs Mentiplay.

Fears about hacking continue to grow, with 89 per cent of Australians now worried about the theft of their private information online (up from 85 per cent), while 86 per cent are worried about the security of their credit card details.

“Fewer people made purchases online this year, with the percentage dropping from 71 per cent to 56 per cent.

“Consumers are also increasingly cautious about handing over their credit card details online,” said Mrs Mentiplay.

The report also looked at the shopping preferences of consumers and found more than three times as many people still prefer shopping in a physical shop to an online store (60 per cent vs 17 per cent). The preference for a shopfront experience is even stronger among females than males (65 per cent vs 54 per cent).

“The old fashioned shopping trip remains more popular than browsing online, particularly among women. People like to try things on before they buy them and we found that 48 per cent have done this in store before buying something online,” said Mrs Mentiplay.