I have a site which converts applicants to enrolled insurance agents at a high rate; I wonder where it stands against similar competition?

I have also another friend in similar bussiness with similar numbers.

Hope it helps…
Yshaool

I agree that I could improve my conversion rate and that the R can only come after making the I. I am willing to make further investments but not without knowing what my best case may be. By understanding the best case, I can make investments proportional to my anticipated return. So the question remains – how does our site stack up against other best-in-class art sites, craft sites and/or jewelry sites.

Cheers,

Mendy

Cheers,

Mendy

There’s no question that strong brand recognition gives certain retail sites an advantage when it comes to converting visitors into customers. The truth is that small businesses have to start somewhere and, generally, it’s smarter for small businesses to focus on conversion than volume.

Yes, it’s tough, but this is what small business is up against online. The big brands don’t have to work as hard. They can outspend the competition. They can bid on expensive keywords. They can hire the best SEO firms, the best designers, the best copywriters — and yet not enough of them do! There are plenty of big brands that could be making this list each month if they really wanted to. Some of them are fat and happy, content to be converting as well or slightly better than the average (a mere 2-3%) so long as revenues are up compared to the previous quarter or the previous year.

Big brands have no excuse not to convert well, just as small e-commerce brands have no excuse not to try harder.

A few months ago, Bryan analyzed the results of this list: “The number one reason the ‘average’ small retailer hasn’t achieved a conversion over 10% is because they haven’t worked hard enough to deserve it.”

It seems Bryan commented about this same issue last month. According to Nielsen: “The conversion rate data is based on visitor conversion rates, not session conversion rates. So it’s the number of unique customers/number of unique visitors.”

Apparently, they monitor over a million people who volunteer to be tracked with their toolbar, and these are the conversion rates they’re seeing for these particular retail sites.

So, I was wrong. It’s not self-reported.

Like I said in my last comment, I believe these numbers to be self-reported by the individual retailers. [Edit: see next comment.] But I agree that it would be best for everyone to know where Nielsen is coming up with these numbers, so I’ve emailed them to let them know that our readers want an answer on this issue. As soon as they right back, I’ll either comment on this thread or follow up with a brief post.

Also, your comment about the paid search (assuming that’s what you mean by “aggressive customer acquisition program”) is spot on. Not all traffic-driving campaigns are equal. Isn’t it possible, though, that all of that non-qualified traffic your driving could be better qualified, and thus convert better? That’s something we see with clients all the time, and they notice big jumps in overall conversion once paid search campaigns are planned and segmented according to customer motivations. We use personas or customer profiles to make that happen.

You also make a good point about brand awareness. That’s another reason why campaigns that are solely focused on driving traffic tend to convert poorly. Of course, driving revenue is much more important than driving traffic — or even boosting conversion. That’s why we all need to ask the bigger questions before assuming where, when and how to focus on traffic vis-a-vis conversion.

Thanks so much for your comment! I’ll be in touch if and when I hear back from Nielsen.

At my company we have a VERY aggressive customer acquisition program and we send a lot of new traffic in, so 95% of people coming to the site are coming for the first time. Because of that our conversion rate ‘all in’ is about 2.6%.

Shut off the fire hose, and it’s a much prettier picture.

Our type-in conversion rate is more like 16%, in other words anyone coming to our site who knows who we are and are coming in for a specific reason.

Thus if we were ‘Office Depot’ where most people know the brand and are coming for either a repeat purchase, or are already buying at one of the stores, or via their catalog, conversion rates of 20% are possible.

If you take any unknow ecommerce company off the street that is sending in 95% of traffic from new visitors, I’d like to see what their conversion rates look like.

Although we have worked with a few companies that have made the list at various times, this list actually comes from Nielsen Online via Marketing Charts. I’m not exactly sure how they get these figures, but I would think that it must be self-reported. [Edit: See comment #6 for details.]

That said, these companies are all welcome to contact FutureNow. Even at 21%, there’s room for improvement.

If not?

Does this mean that every 5th visitor on their site was converted! Each fifth visitor resulting in sale is awesome.

What if the 50% are repeat visitors!

These are real master.