e-consultancy builds Compendium of eCommerce Rates

If you have responsibility for commercial analysis and target setting at all, these metrics from Ashley Friedlein of e-consultancy may be useful. Friedlein is building a compendium of benchmarks against which to judge conversion rates, click through rates, drop out rates and traffic levels for websites.

'Most companies are only now beginning really to get their web metrics house in order but the next obvious question to be asked is "Well, I'm now pretty confident I'm getting X but is that good or bad?". Over time you can benchmark performance relative to your own site but what about in comparison to others, in particular your peers and competitors?' he asks.

'Is anyone the de facto source of benchmarks for this kind of data? Not that I know of. There's no BARB equivalent for the web yet. Most information on benchmarks is anecdotal.'

Following are his starter suggestions (based on an aggregate of all sorts of sources):

- Browse-to-buy ratios on a B2C site: 1-10%
- Converting registered site users to paid subscribers: 2-7%
- Average click through on banners: 0.5%
- Average click through on e-mail marketing for an in-house opt-in list: 10-25%
- Average click through on e-mail marketing for a bought-in targeted opt-in list: 5-15%
- Percentage of repeat users / unique users for a content site: 5-40%

It's worth checking back to the page below if you are interested in metrics of this kind, as other people are adding responses that build on Friedlein's collection at the moment.

Associated Link: e-consultancy: Compendium of Industry benchmarks

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