• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, April 8, 2005

The home shopping retailer QVC had the highest conversion rate--16.3 percent-- in February of 117 online retailers monitored by Nielsen//NetRatings, according to a report released Thursday.

Land's End has parlayed its success as a meat and potatoes mail-order business to the Internet, with a 14.8 percent conversion rate. Visitors to sportsmanguide.com converted at a rate of 13.5 percent, while both the flowers and gifts site FTC.com, and llbean.com--which has a small offline presence--managed conversion rates of 13.4 percent.

Amazon visitors converted at a rate of 12.8 percent, followed by Coldwater Creek, a practical women's apparel retailer with a substantial brick-and-mortar presence, with 12.7 percent. eBay, not considered an ecommerce site by many, drew a conversion rate of 12.3 percent. Rounding out the top 10 were Yahoo! shopping--with a 12.1 percent conversion rate--and proflowers.com, with a conversion rate of 11.8 percent.

"Brick-and-mortar retailers are noticeably absent among the top performers in online sales conversion rates. While traffic is high to popular brick-and-mortar Web sites, visitors are often researching purchases to be made offline," Heather Dougherty, senior retail analyst, Nielsen//NetRatings, said in a statement. "Customers visiting a catalogers' Web site already have the information they need about the product--and therefore, are ready to make an immediate purchase."

The list is part of Nielsen's MegaView Online Retail service, which tracks online consumer retail activity and purchasing behavior, and offers marketers competitive benchmarking, dollar spending insights, and buyer conversion rates.

Nielsen also reported the top 15 online retail categories based on average order size for the month of February. The computer hardware category led, eliciting an average order size of $584.47; event and movie tickets drew an average order size of $121.60; and on average, consumers spent about $119.93 at automotive sites.