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I enjoy going to town it occasionally when it's quiet, nothing beats a good book shop. A 40 hour job and OU studies means shopping is a low priority. Bear in mind the old small shops model still works in some cities, like Paris. But here I think both people working may perhaps have caused issues also. Time, or money, or local...
A regeneration with kids entertainment like IKEA has and parking may work. Maybe. But who is going to invest in a dying area?
But I do sometimes visit the local food shop which is £££ but lovely. They survived by filling a luxury niche market and are still ran by local people. I also go to my local Spar. Where nearly all food is still imported... bar leeks/scallions/onions/comber taytoes. Rents in town are too high, I was talking to a new business owner (the cookie box shops) and he says it's very hard due to this. They're doing OK which is nice to see! The problem runs deep.
You are right that it's hard to set up and run online services. It could be done as a co-op eg the Belfast Towns co-op ran with government assistance. (that also leaves the parking issues as public transport is £££ and awful).
I'm not so worried about myself, if needed I can leave and go back. My son was also born here.
I'm more worried about you guys... we joke about class issues in The Netherlands but it's bound to get worse. And my son grows up here. So whatever goes wrong for the UK, goes wrong for him too. It's too simple to say immigrants don't care about the UK but we were good to use as a political football. That's not pleasant. But if it all goes to pot, I can leave and leave you to it.
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JWestland
I have heard of savvy local-ish businesses who have installed on-line ordering and local deliveries, too. In my experience, though, it only works for some--keeping up the expenses of both maintaining a physical presence, e.g. on a high street, and the delivery service, can be too costly if you don't already have a certain size.
Also, I don't believe it is likely to be worth anyone's while if the other local competitors then start the same--you'll soon be left with fewer businesses in a certain sector, as some will be more successful than others in extending their reach (which arranging for home delivery tends to do).
My big obsession is with proper locality--having small, locally-defined (not artificially by protectionism) markets wherever possible. That's obviously a bit of a Canute's quest with today's Net of the Inter and the ability to bypass (in tandem with transport and planning policies that continually increase the need to travel) geographical barriers, but in a sense the Internet has brought the issue to the fore like few other developments, even of pre-Internet multinationals, has done.
(And I'm well aware that Amazon et al. are merely being propped up by venture capitalists aiming to help it expand until it has largely eliminated more local competition, and that if companies like it paid their fair share of taxes, theirs would be a far less attractive proposition to venture capital.)
I personally love going shopping locally. I could imagine that your issues with crowds and people may to some extent be caused by the experience in large supermarket chain branches? I haven't shopped there for about twenty years and can't imagine having such issues in small local shops. Obviously, there's more limited stock, you have to go to several shops and can't just do everything in one go, but I've come to appreciate those aspects as advantages, too. You're also not a hostage to fortune when it comes to 'loss leaders' and higher prices for other goods, and you can always do part of your shop somewhere else if you know you get something there that you like more or that it's cheaper.