CONSUMER goods retailer Harvey Norman is drastically scaling back plans to conduct five per cent of its trade online, only months after launching a brand new website.

Chief executive Gerry Harvey said the company's recent online trading figures had been unimpressive.

"We're happy with our presence, we're happy with our site, we're not happy with our sales,'' Mr Harvey said.

"When we set up the online transactional site a couple of months back, we saw it being about five per cent of our turnover, but at the moment it's not going up at all, it's still sitting at about 0.5 of one per cent.''

Mr Harvey said the company was revising down its original target of five per cent of trade online within two years to between one and two per cent.

"We've all overestimated it by an enormous amount,'' he said.

The company has long been accused of dragging its heals in establishing a functioning retail website.

On Wednesday, Harvey Norman reported first half net profit fell by 2.1 per cent but the company said it would continue to heavily discount televisions and computers in the difficult retail environment.

Shares in the company are trading at less than half their September 2009 levels amid heavy discounting of electronics goods while cautious Australian shoppers increasingly turn to the internet.

Despite the pressures, Mr Harvey said his company had aspirations of becoming a dominant player in online retailing in Australia.

"We're trying to do that with our Harvey Norman model and our Harvey Norman Big Buys model ... we'd like to be in that position,'' Mr Harvey said.

"Whether we ever end up there or not, I don't know.''

"Maybe the ideal thing would be to be an Amazon where you sell everything on the internet.''

Fellow retailers David Jones, Myer, Woolworths, Wesfarmers, JB Hi-Fi and Harvey Norman are all trying to make up for lost time in the online sphere, but analysts say a dominant local player is yet to emerge.

Last week Woolworths said some retailers had been dragged kicking and screaming to online retailing while David Jones insisted it was not worried by the prospect of a big player such as Amazon entering the Australian market.

Harvey Norman's recent online experience does not tally up with February's National Australia Bank (NAB) Online Retail Sales Index which showed online represented 4.9 per cent of Australia's $216 billion retailing industry.

Mr Harvey said there was a widespread misconception that large volumes of sales were driven through online retailing.

In an effort to diversify its product range, Harvey Norman has begun stocking motorbikes, sporting goods, boats, musical instruments, homewares and billiard tables.

"We just like to do a lot of things to make a dollar, I guess, because it's so difficult in the area we're in,'' Mr Harvey said.

