Here are the list of January 2008’s top 10 converting retail sites, according to Nielsen/NetRatings’ MegaView Retail Report for January:

Proflowers.com, 14.1%
Coldwater Creek, 13.3%
FTD.com, 13.0%
QVC, 12.8%
Office Depot, 12.4%
eBay, 11.5%
Lands’ End, 11.5%
Tickets.com, 11.2%
1800flowers.com, 10.0%
Amazon, 9.6%

Now, I know a lot of you reading this would kill their own grandmother for a 9.6% conversion rate. But surprising as this might sound, I think Amazon’s 9.6% conversion rate is quite low. Here’s why I say that…

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Perhaps you do the same as me… tune out or switch channels every time the adverts come on TV. Quite frankly, TV advertising annoys me - but pop-ups and flashy banner ads annoy me even more. If I get a pop-up fly in my face the first time I visit a site, that annoys me - sometimes to the point where I’ll just leave the site.

As a marketer, I should know better. After all, they’re just getting attention, aren’t they? What could be wrong with that?

Nothing, if you don’t mind a hand being waved in your face saying, “Look at me, look at me!”. Aren’t there better ways of getting someone’s attention?
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Does a higher price affect how much people like your product? The answer appears to be Yes, according to research conducted by Antonio Rangel and his colleagues at the California Institute of Technology.

They wanted to test out people’s perceptions of higher price equating to higher quality. So they asked 20 people to sample wine while an MRI scan measured their brain’s response to the wine.

The subjects were told they would be tasting five different Cabernet Sauvignons sold at different prices, with prices marked on each sample ranging from $5 to $90.

In fact, they were really only tasting three different samples at different price points - so, for instance, a $90 wine was labelled at both $10 and $90, and a $5 wine was labelled at both $5 and $45.

The brains of the people in the test showed more pleasure at the higher price than the lower one, even for the same wine! In other words, increases in the price of the product resulted in an increase in pleasure experienced by the drinkers.

However, when the testers did not have any prices to compare, they actually rated the $5 wine as better than the others!

“Our results suggest that the brain might compute experienced pleasantness in a much more sophisticated manner that involves integrating the actual sensory properties of the substance being consumed with the expectations about how good it should be,” they reported, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

In other words, the stereotype that a low price is inferior, and a higher price is superior, may be more deeply ingrained into us than we realize.

Just bear that in mind next time you’re thinking of dropping your prices. You may also be lowering your product’s “liking” factor!

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Now that’s a question I hear all the time. Let me show you why it’s a very misleading question.

According to the August 2007 edition of Target Marketing Magazine, “…research indicates that the average conversion rate - that is the ratio of orders to overall site visits - is 2.9 percent.”

Since this research didn’t include smaller online marketers, I suspect the actual average is probably closer to 1% or 2%.

However, this figure doesn’t really tell you whether that conversion rate is good or bad. For example, if you’re selling a $50 million jet engine, then a 1% conversion rate could be very good! You only need approximately 100 visitors to make a $50 million sale.

In the end, I believe a “good” conversion rate is one that is optimized - in other words,
it’s the best your site can achieve.
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Traffic is great, but you need to convert those visitors into customers in order to make money.

ConversionBlogger is here to help you do that.

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