All around the UK high street stores lie abandoned. But this is not just a symptom of the recession taking its toll on consumers. It's also a sign of "etail 3.0" - a new wave of online retailers offering shoppers a better experience, product range and value than they can find offline.

The first wave of etail involved online retailers undercutting their traditional counterparts on price. The second involved trying to create "experiences" online, rather than just slashing costs. But the third sees etailers surpassing their high street rivals with enhanced consumer offerings.

The industry body for global online retailing, IMRG, predicts that by the end of this year, 20% of the UK's pound 300bn retail business will be e-commerce. Fashion brands such as ASOS (originally "As seen on screen"), Net-A-Porter, jewellery and diamond specialists Blue Nile, optician business Glasses Direct and many others are providing sophisticated customer-focused experiences that leave their high street rivals trailing in their wake.

High street fashion retailers are traditionally some of the worst culprits for poor websites. Over-focused on making the websites look pretty, they have hitherto overlooked that the successful online fashion retailers fully embrace the whole consumer-centric concept of ecommerce and also manage to look good.

Jamie Murray-Wells, founder of online spectacles company, Glasses Direct, embodies this third wave of customer-centric web businesses. Murray-Wells recently received a Queen's Award for Enterprise - at 26, he is the youngest ever recipient - but more tellingly, he also recently secured pound 10m venture capital funding to invest in his UK business and launch an attack on the US market.

Murray-Wells says: "Things like value and range are as necessary in ecommerce as in other lines of business - it's the bread and butter. But as companies like Amazon have found, as you mature as a business, where the real headroom exists is in how you delight and surprise customers."

Glasses Direct exemplifies the etail 3.0 trend by taking the disadvantages and restrictions of an online business selling apparel - the inability to try things on - and using innovative marketing methods and delivery tactics, to create an experience not available on the high street.

For example, Murray-Wells allows consumers to select four pairs of glasses to be sent to them for trial, decide which ones they like, then return the rejects free in a specially designed box. No high street operator could hold the necessary stock in its branches to make an offer of this type.

In a high street outlet, consumers can only shop for glasses in one way, with products bracketed in categories such as "rimless" or "designer". Online, Glasses Direct is able to offer new and multiple ways of looking for glasses by devising searches so that people can look for frames made of a particular material, colour or to suit a particular face shape or hair style. The company is even working on technologies that will suggest frames to users based on lifestyle questions.

A team of facial recognition experts in Paris have developed a "virtual mirror', a piece of software that allows users to virtually place the glasses on their heads and try them on online. Users can upload a picture of themselves, see themselves in several different pairs and send the results to their Facebook page or other social networking destination, or post on the Glasses Direct community forum and ask other users what they think.

Murray-Wells believes the social element of buying glasses is an important one. "We think people bring partners and friends into an opticians for their input more often than they do when they are, say, buying a dress." But no high street optician can offer the range of opinions facilitated by Glasses Direct with its social and virtual technology.

Glasses Direct has been running since 2004, when Murray-Wells, then a student, founded Glasses Direct to allow people to buy prescription glasses online at a cheaper price than they would through a high street equivalent.