LANCASTER'S world wide web experts have been asked to help a major Paris store get online.

Lancaster University computer experts are helping major companies develop their online shopping services.

The famous Parisian department store, Galeries-Lafayette, is looking to Lancaster to improve a system which allows customers to talk directly to salespeople over the web, using a form of video-conferencing.

This would have major benefits over the usual non-interactive photographs of items for sale, which appear on most online shopping sites.

Prof David Hutchison from computing, who is leading the project, said: "More companies are wanting to get new business from the internet. This project hopes to give the shopper a way of shopping from home that has the added value of being able to get information from another human being at the store, and cuts out the 'impersonality' of the internet that some people find off-putting."

The department and its co-researchers in German and Swiss universities, together with the industrial partners, have received £700,000 from the European Commission for this new development, which will include looking at systems to make payment by credit card more secure, and to make in-store browsing anonymous if the customer prefers to shop that way.