Comments on: Top 10 Online Retailers by Conversion Rate: April 2008

By: Southampton Accountant

Southampton Accountant — Thu, 28 May 2009 16:06:47 +0000

These are some pretty impressive numbers, but you have to question the accuracy…

By: Peter Digstra

Peter Digstra — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 11:47:27 +0000

I agree with Isaac.
These numbers are difficult to judge because we don’t know how they are calculated.
I work for a Dutch printing website and in our country Vistaprint is quite unsuccessful.
They do have large volume but that’s mainly because they give away very much for free.

By: Ern Langmaid

Ern Langmaid — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 06:13:23 +0000

Seems to me that no one knows how to gather acurate stats on the net. If I could get accurate info I could make more money.
Tools are helpful, but a lot of experience and testing seems to do the job best for me so far.

By: Noel Hennessy

Noel Hennessy — Wed, 28 May 2008 13:41:43 +0000

Agree with the other general comments but also:
– volume comparisson figures? 10% of 100 vs 10% of 10000 and so on. Conversion rate doesn’t do it for me I’m afraid. At the very least a high / low / average report would be better – averaging out across all doesn’t balance.

– eBay? what kind of figures are we comparing there (the apples and oranges thing again)

By: Isaac

Isaac — Tue, 27 May 2008 23:34:43 +0000

Definitely does look like some fuzzy math is involved, at least with some of these sites.

Has there been an explanation as to what is included and how these companies are calculating their results (ie: does someone requesting free business cards from VistaPrint.com count as an e-commerce conversion)? Are these numbers self-reported, or tracked by an independent company?

By: Paul Boisvert

Paul Boisvert — Tue, 27 May 2008 20:26:43 +0000

Hi Bryan,

I am surprised to see that natural traffic drives such a seemingly low volume of traffic and sales compared to direct load. Were domain/brand queries (e.g. search for officedepot.com) reassigned to the direct load category? Also, while overall natural search site conversion may be so blended as to be meaningless, I’m still surprised to see a metric below 2% for such heavy hitters.

Paul

By: Ryan

Ryan — Tue, 27 May 2008 18:38:12 +0000

While some of these metrics can be used to compare your site head to head, other metrics may be drastically different for the type of product/service- like apples to oranges it’s just not fair.

By: Thomas Pletsers

Thomas Pletsers — Tue, 27 May 2008 14:51:31 +0000

8. Oriental Trading Company – 16.5%???

Did some searches to how they persuade customers on their landing pages. Their Google ad showed up this page

http://www.orientaltrading.com/application?origin=page.jsp&namespace=browse&event=link.itemDetails&categoryId=377320&sku=PT648&BP=8898&Source=Google&cm_mmc=Google-_-OTC+SendTec+Theme+Party-_-Barbie-_-barbie+party+supplies

Good example of when you pay an marketing agency in Chicago to handle your paid advertising. Other searches done showed landing pages that where simple search results done on their own site search engine using the same search terms. Not really as persuasive as I have seen on other sites that you guys shown in the past, and very different form what I have read in Waiting for your cat to bark, and Call to Action.

By: Thomas Pletsers

Thomas Pletsers — Tue, 27 May 2008 14:28:39 +0000

I this based on paid advertising or is organic traffic included as well.

By: Byron

Byron — Tue, 27 May 2008 04:42:30 +0000

Sorry, Fuzzy Math

By: Byron

Byron — Tue, 27 May 2008 04:29:51 +0000

Re: How do these guy calculate conversion?

Maybe Fuzzy Map?

By: Alain

Alain — Fri, 23 May 2008 20:43:16 +0000

Hi,

new to this blog. I have a question I’m sure was answered in the past. How do these guy calculate conversion?

tks

By: Mark from Just Accountants

Mark from Just Accountants — Fri, 23 May 2008 07:33:25 +0000

I know this keeps getting mentioned, but I still find these numbers hard to believe.

I’m aware that the goal of every site should be to convert 100% of qualified visitors, but it just doesn’t ring true for me that 1 in 4 unique visitors to ProFlowers actually buys something.

By: Linda Bustos

Linda Bustos — Thu, 22 May 2008 23:08:15 +0000

I’m a bit surprised to see Oriental Trading there after finding a search ad for OT appearing in a search for “coffee mugs” that landed on a search page for “rugs” – I hope that’s just an anomaly and not an indication of a very sloppy paid search campaign.

By: Robert Gorell

Robert Gorell — Thu, 22 May 2008 13:08:47 +0000

ProFlowers does it again. Looks like their email campaigns got people ordering early for Mothers' Day.