While traffic is high to popular brick-and-mortar Web sites, visitors are often researching purchases to be made offline
Heather Dougherty, senior retail analyst, Nielsen//NetRatings

Nielsen//NetRatings recently released the first Internet retail report card from the MegaView Online Retail service. The report card highlights the top 10 online retailers ranked by sales conversion rates, and top 15 product categories ranked by average order size during February 2005. Nielsen//NetRatings MegaView Online Retail service tracks online consumer retail activity and purchasing behavior, and offers marketers competitive benchmarking, dollar spending insights and buyer conversion rates.

Nielsen//NetRatings found that among the top 10 online retailers ranked by conversion rates in February 2005, only Coldwater Creek has a significant brick-and-mortar presence. The remaining nine retailers are comprised of a television shopping network, catalogs and online-only retailers.

Table 1. Top 10 Online Retailers Based on Conversion Rate, February 2005 eCommerce Site Conversion Rate (%) QVC 16.3 Lands’ End 14.8 sportsmansguide.com 13.5 FTD.com 13.4 llbean.com 13.4 Amazon 12.8 Coldwater Creek 12.7 eBay 12.3 Yahoo! Shopping 12.1 proflowers.com 11.8 Source: Nielsen//NetRatings MegaView Online Retail, April 2005

QVC marked the highest conversion rates out of approximately 117 online retailers, turning 16.3 percent of its site shoppers into purchasers. Lands’ End followed by converting 14.8 percent of its visitors into buyers, with Sportsman’s Guide ranking third by converting 13.5 percent. The average conversion rate is 4.9 percent among the top 100 retailers. “Brick-and-mortar retailers are noticeably absent among the top performers in online sales conversion rates.

While traffic is high to popular brick-and-mortar Web sites, visitors are often researching purchases to be made offline,” said Heather Dougherty, senior retail analyst, Nielsen//NetRatings. “Customers visiting a catalogers’ Web site already have the information they need about the product, and therefore, are ready to make an immediate purchase.”