Besides a few stellar exceptions, online merchants are seeing very few conversions. According to two studies, conversions for retail e-commerce sites mostly fall in between 2% to 3%.
The e-tailing group, which acts as an e-commerce consulting firm, reported that in 2007, 36% of online merchants are seeing conversion rates of 2.0% to 3.9%. This is very similar to 2006 figures, which indicated that 35% of online merchants experienced conversion rates of 2.0% to 3.9%. In 2005, 36% of online merchants fell into the same range.
A study conducted by Shop.org and Forrester Research in June of last year came to the same conclusion. In that study, retail e-commerce merchants in the U.S. saw an average conversion rate of 2.4%. In 2004 the study indicated a 2.6% conversion rate, and in 2003 the figure was 2.4%.
In 2002, however, the average conversion rate for online merchants in the U.S. was 3.2%, while in 2001 the average conversion rate was 3.1%.
To combat this stagnancy, 29% of online merchants have indicated that they will spend more of their sales budgets to marketing efforts. Keyword search, e-mail campaigns, special savings and sales, seasonal promotions, cross-sells, and free or conditional free shipping will all be major parts of these efforts.
Not many consumers abandon their shopping carts after they have placed their desired items in them while at actual supermarkets, but online the habit is very common. About 29% of online merchants do not keep a user’s items in their abandoned shopping carts, while 27% of them keep the items in the carts for one to three months.
So, it appears that a friendly, non-invasive way to remind these users about their abandoned shopping carts could be an interesting idea, though it would seem that most of these users have knowingly abandoned these carts for good reasons.
Nielsen//NetRatings released a study in December 2006 that listed the top 10 U.S. e-commerce sites in terms of conversion rates. Proflowers.com topped the list with a 24.5% conversion rate in November 2006, while LillianVernon.com (21.2%) and Blair.com (20.2%) rounded out the top three.
Lane Bryant Catalog, LLBean.com, ChristianBook.com, KingSizeDirect.com, QVC, JessicaLondon.com, and Coldwater Creek Inc. followed behind (in that order) to fill in the rest of the top 10 list.
Sources:
http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?1004774
http://www.bizreport.com/2007/04/survey_merchants
_to_focus_on_targeting.html
Digg 
