Top 10 Online Retailers by Conversion Rate: August 2008

September 22nd, 2008

Here are the top 10 converting websites for August 2008*. These are based on Nielson Panel data and are calculated by toolbar user to final conversion.

1. ProFlowers 41.50%
2. 1800flowers.com 20.8%
3. Blair.com 20.10%
4. QVC 20.10%
5. LaneBryant Catalog 19.7%
6. LL Bean 19.7%
7. Roamans 18.80%
8. The Sportsman Guide 17.7%
9. Office Depot 17.30%
10. eBay 15.2%

*Source: Nielsen Online / Marketing Charts

What happened to Proflowers.com? 41.50% is just amazing. Interestingly, last month we had all three big florists, but FTD fell off the list. Most important, Children’sPlace was on the last month, but not in the month of August right before back-to-school shopping, is this a sign of early holiday shopping to come?

Additonal June Retail Benchmarks:

Page Views Per Session 11.64
Product Page Views Per Session 3.06
Average Time on Site (in seconds) 479.87
Average Items/Order 6.15
Average Order Value $154.89
Shopping Cart Conversion Rate 32.61%
Shopping Cart Abandonment 67.39%
New Visitor Conversion Rate 1.96%
On-site Search Session 16.22%
On-site Search Conversion Rate 5.85%
On-site Search Average Order Value $178.52

Marketing Summary Benchmarks:

Direct Load:
Traffic % 48.72%
Sales % 73.02%
Conversion Rate 3.19%

Natural Search:
Traffic % 13.59%
Sales % 7.83%
Conversion Rate 2.12%

Referrals:
Traffic % 6.04%
Sales % 1.81%
Referral Conversion Rate 1.77%

* Source: Coremetrics LIVEmark Benchmarks US (PDF) – UK benchmarks PDF available.

Coremetrics LIVEmark leverages aggregate performance data across more than 300 participating brands to deliver over 35 benchmark metrics addressing performance indicators such as campaign and channel effectiveness, site stickiness and conversion rates.

If you need help increasing your conversion rate, let us know.

In Conversion Rates, Research, Retail, e-commerce

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Comments (14)

Rossella Spoto
September 23rd, 2008
5:12 am

Hi there, thannks for publishing these benchmarka – I have tried to download the UK benchmark report but it seems to have been removed, can you help?
Best wishes!
Rossella
Edward
September 23rd, 2008
2:48 pm

Interesting. Very interesting. I wonder why online flower delivery converts so well? Any ideas?
Gary
September 23rd, 2008
9:40 pm

I assume that the conversion rate data for ebay includes where people have placed a bid (rather than actually purchased a product). If this is the case then the ebay conversion rates above will result in very low actual purchase rates (in the form of winning an auction and payment being excahnged for a physical product or tangible service).
Dr. Pete
September 24th, 2008
10:52 am

I know we’ve argued about this before (and you usually win ), but seriously, 41.5%?! I’ve got to ask: do you believe it, and do you think we’re comparing apples to apples? To me, that means 41.5% of unique visitors make a purchase. Now, I know that ProFlowers is a perfect storm for conversion: a strong brand, an easily understood product, a short-timeframe purchase (especially we married men 2 days before a holiday), a relatively low price point, and to be fair, a very well-built site. Still, the empiricist in me just can’t accept 41.5% without seeing the data, especially in this weak economy.
Bryan Eisenberg
September 24th, 2008
11:25 am

Dr. Pete,

I was pretty shocked when I saw that number too. Realize that this is for the particular segment of people who use Nielsen Online and allow them to collect their activity. So it is an apple to apple comparison. In theory you could benchmark your site if you access to the rest of their panel data.

Thanks,
Bryan
mariano
September 25th, 2008
9:01 am

Hi Bryan !, great data, can you share with us conversion rates for the online travel industry? ( visit to book ratios?), I always have the doubt if we understand a conversion as the act of purshasing and paying for something, instead of filling a form, downloading something, lead generation, etc, acording with your data, 4 over 10 visits purchase flowers? , just can’t believe it!,
Adam
September 29th, 2008
3:08 pm

Hi Brian,

I own an e-commerce website with terrible conversion ratios. In my opinion (and I’m sure you’ve heard this before) the website looks great. I mean that in all humility, we spent a lot of time optimizing every aspect of the website. With that being said, the website also gets a fair amount of traffic. I assume this would be the perfect scenario to figure out what’s wrong with it, because in my opinion there has to be something. If you’d be interested in further discussing this, please get in touch with me.

Adam.
Chuck
October 7th, 2008
3:40 pm

Bryan,

Let’s think rationally about this. One out of every 2.5 people who VISIT Proflowers.Com buys something??!

I’m sorry, that is impossible. Even if they were giving out their flowers for FREE I wouldn’t believe these numbers. If you examine ProFlowers’ architecture, you’ll see they do a lot of odd things with their URLs and their cookies, not to mention a little black hat SEO.

All of us in the business are very quick to accept and defend the Neilsen NetRatings and ComScores of the world, because there isn’t anything better to look at. But until they open up their methodologies for all of us to scrutinize, it is amazingly open to abuse, deliberately or not. Remember “Dewey Defeats Truman”.
sameer
December 2nd, 2008
4:07 pm

this is a great benchmark list. It would be great if someone could provide similar benchmarks for lead gen/content site.
Bobby Missry
January 7th, 2009
10:25 am

Are these benchmarks data that the top 10 online retailers reached?
Shruti
February 17th, 2009
7:06 am

This is interesting data. On our E-comm site we get decent traffic but traffic is relatively low. However I have observed that increase in traffic does not impact the conversion. Thus I am confused whether it will be worth increasing traffic on my site as am not even able to sustain the conversion forget increasing it. Any idea what would be an avg conversion ratio of E-comm site of a publishing house? Also would it make sense to buy traffic to increase conversion or should I just go listing on other E-commerce portals?
canadian bodybuilding
April 7th, 2009
11:17 am

i should start selling flowers lol
Landlord
April 8th, 2009
9:31 am

Wow, what happened to office depot. Last report they were right up there at the top. Just because we’re entering a depression people stop buying office supplies?
Canadian Bodybuilding
September 3rd, 2009
7:30 pm

It’s too bad it’s impossible to compete against these retailers. The little guy will never win.

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