The top e-retailers outperform the market, the new Top 500 Guide reports

America’s 500 largest web retailers continue to outperform the rest of the industry, according to the newly published Internet Retailer Guide to the Top 500 Retail Web Sites. As a group, the Top 500 grew online sales by 28.5% in 2005 compared to 19% for all other e-retailers.

The Top 500 Guide, which builds on previous editions of Top 300 and Top 400, was published today by Internet Retailer. It can be ordered for $59 plus shipping online at www.internetretailer.com/top500.

Amazon.com Inc. (No. 1) remains the undisputed leader in online retailing, with 2005 web sales of $8.5 billion, an increase of 22.7% over 2004’s $6.9 billion.

With 2005 web sales of $146.7 million—a 17-fold increase from web sales of $8.6 billion in 2004—Blockbuster Inc. (No. 70) was the fastest growing web retailer in 2005, the Top 500 Guide reports, followed by online home fixtures web retailer InsideStore.com (No. 476), which grew sales 478% to $5.2 million in 2005. The retailer with the fastest growth among the Top 100 that was also a member of last year’s Top 100 was Zappos.com, up 101% to $370 million.

The Top 500 Guide also recognizes several new members of the billion dollar club. In fact, $1 billion or more in online sales got a retailer into the top 14 this year, vs. the top 9 last year.

In addition to Amazon, the other 2005 top 15 sites, all in the billion-dollar club, include:
Office Depot Inc. (No.2), $3.8 billion
Staples Inc. (No.3), $3.8 billion
Dell Inc. (No. 4), $3.78 billion
HP Home and Home Office Store (No. 5), $2.8 billion
OfficeMax Inc. (No. 6), $2.6 billion
Sears (No. 7), $2.2 billion
CDW Corp. (No. 8), $1.8 billion
SonyStyle.com (No. 9), $1.6 billion
Newegg.com (No. 10), $1.3 billion
Best Buy Co. (No. 11), $1.2 billion
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (No. 12), $1.04 billion
J.C. Penney Co. Inc. (No.13) $1.03 billion
QVC Inc. (No. 14), $1 billion
Apple Computer Inc. (No.15); $900 million.

Web sales for Apple, Best Buy, Dell, HP, Sears, Sony and Wal-Mart are Internet Retailer estimates.

When Internet Retailer launched the Top 300 Guide in 2004, the plan was to build a statistical and analytical database that ultimately ranked America’s 500 largest web retailing organizations based on annual sales. Each retailer’s listing also includes: site traffic, conversion rate, average ticket, senior management, key vendor and where each retailer ranks in the market they serve. New this year are performance rankings, provided by Gomez Inc., and all URLs that each retail company uses.

The Top 500 Guide includes 142 e-retail businesses that are owned or operated by store-based retail chains, 88 by catalog and direct-marketing firms, 45 by consumer branded manufacturers and 225 by the so-called pure plays or web-only retailers.

As e-retailing becomes more established, the Top 500 Guide finds that more online merchants are freely revealing their online sales numbers. This year, 240 companies reported their online sales data, compared with 150 last year and 100 the year before. The Top 500 Guide, which sells for $59 for a single copy plus $6.95 for shipping and handling, can be ordered by clicking here.