Direct marketers topped a list of online retailers with the best conversion rates in an Internet sales report card for February released yesterday by Nielsen//NetRatings' MegaView Online Retail tracking service.
Home-shopping network QVC led the top-10 list with a 16.3 percent conversion rate for the month, according to Nielsen//NetRatings. Lands' End followed with 14 percent.
The report card is the first by MegaView Online Retail, which tracks online consumer retail activity and purchasing behavior.
The rest of the list: Sportsmanguide.com, 13.5 percent; FTD.com, 13.4 percent; L.L. Bean, 13.4 percent; Amazon, 12.8 percent; Coldwater Creek, 12.7 percent; eBay, 12.3 percent; Yahoo Shopping, 12.1 percent; and Proflowers.com, 11.8 percent. Of those, only Coldwater Creek has a significant brick-and-mortar retail presence while the rest are catalogers and online-only merchants, according to Nielsen//NetRatings.
Brick-and-mortar company Web sites tend to get plenty of traffic, but people visit the sites to research offline purchases, Nielsen//NetRatings said. Customers going to catalogers' Web sites appear more ready to make purchases online.
The report card also listed retail categories by average order sizes. Leading the list were computer hardware with $584.47, events and movie tickets at $121.60 and automotive with $119.23.
Scott Hovanyetz covers telemarketing, production and printing and direct response TV marketing for DM News and DMNews.com. To keep up with the latest developments in these areas, subscribe to our daily and weekly e-mail newsletters by visiting www.dmnews.com/newsletters
