Newport-news.com leads apparel field in conversion rates, comScore reports

Of 15 apparel web sites measured by comScore Networks Inc., The Spiegel Group’s newport-news.com and Net Apparel LLC’s onehanesplace.com experienced the highest conversion rates in July, followed closely by Chadwick’s of Boston Inc.’s Chadwicks.com.

ComScore reports that newsport-news.com experienced a conversion rate that reached a whopping 15.4%, followed closely by onehanesplace.com’s 15.1%. Chadwicks.com came in at 12.3%. The top three sites have held those positions consistently for the past several months, comScore says. After Chadwick’s, there was significant drop off to jcrew.com’s still respectable 9.1% and llbean.com’s 8.5% to round out the top 5. Lands’ End’s and J.C. Penney’s sites were only a hair behind L.L. Bean at 8.4% and 8.3%, respectively.

Conversion rates on web sites are typically considered acceptable if they exceed 2%. By that measure, all the Spiegel sites are doing well; eddiebauer.com had a conversion rate of 7.5% while spiegel.com had a 4% conversion rate. Interestingly, the Spiegel Group’s web sites have been the consistent star in sales this year—while Spiegel’s store and catalog sales are declining, its web sales are increasing. J. Crew Group Inc. has had a similar experience; its first half web sales are up 25% while overall sales are flat. ComScore reports that jcrew.com has doubled its conversion rate in the past quarter.

At the bottom of the conversion rate list are bananarepublic.com with 1.6%, nordstrom.com with 1.7%, abercrombie.com with 2.5% and bluefly.com with 2.9%.

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ComScore also reports a correlation between average number of pages viewed per completed transaction and average number of pages viewed for all visitors. With some exceptions, the number is lower for the sites with the highest conversion rates, meaning that customers are finding what they want faster and checking out faster at the sites with the higher conversion rates than at the sites with lower conversion rates. The same is true with minutes spent on a site.

“There’s such a big variation in conversion rates that you have to believe that some retailers have figured out the recipe and others are still looking for that magic ingredient,” says Erin Hunter, vice president and general manager of retail industry solutions for comScore.

Reston, VA-based ComScore Networks gathers its site data by analyzing the web behavior of members who have chosen to participate in comScore’s measurement services. Those consumers are rewarded with accelerated Internet access and sweepstakes. The browsing information that comScore gathers from its members is anonymous.

The accompanying chart shows the number of pages that buyers viewed compared to the number of pages that all visitors to a site viewed. The baseline is 100. Thus an index of 223 means that buyers looked at 2.23 times more pages than all visitors to a site. A lower index is preferrable, comScore says, because that means customers are finding what they need faster and checking out faster. The same is true for the minutes column below.