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…

Can you remember the last time you visited Amazon.com? I’m fairly sure most people who visit Amazon are aware that they sell books (and other things) - they’re a retailer.

So if most people know that Amazon is essentially an online retail store, and yet 90% visit the site and don’t end up buying, what happened to those 90%… why didn’t they buy?

Speaking personally, I’ve visited Amazon a few times with the intention of buying, but I found the log-in process quite tedious (having to remember my account password being just one example), and so I abandoned the order and went off in search of a site that didn’t require me to set up an account to make what was essentially an impulse purchase.

Of course, I’m just one person. Conversion rates on a site like Amazon are based on millions of visitors and transactions. I could easily say, “Oh, they should make ordering a book for me much easier and that would boost conversions” - but in reality, it may not. They may have already tested this, and the benefits of requiring people to have an account (in terms of sales) may have outweighed the alternative.

Or then again, maybe they haven’t tested it. I wrote in my ebook Small Changes: Big Profits (please tell me you’ve read my book by now…) about how Amazon only discovered the importance of “shopping cart recommendations” because of the persistence of a developer who defied a senior marketing vice-president by testing it without permission - dramatically boosting sales.

So is it possible to achieve a 10% or higher conversion rate? If so, how? We’ll discuss these things another time, so make sure you’re subscribed to this blog otherwise you’ll miss it, and bad things will happen to you! And you wouldn’t want that, would you?