look-to-buy ratio

[rcjordan]

the article [internetvcwatch.com] isn't particulary noteworthy, except it did confirm the ''look-to-buy'' (conversion) ratio:

the average look-to-buy ratio of 50-to-1 for e-commerce sites

Doing the math, if a banner has .008 CTR, then the ''banner-to-buy'' ratio is .00016, or approximately 3 sales for every 20,000 banners. Obviously, this ratio is likely to vary quite a bit in certain product categories, but I found it to be true in household leisure products.

[Brett_Tabke]

Ok, what *is* a household leisure product?

(be nice)

[rcjordan]

Hammock, rope chair, swings... goes under the industry moniker of 'leisure furniture' or somesuch. Others would be those that sell Sharper-Image type goodies, stainless-steel barbeque grills, weird swimming pool 'accessories' (for lack of a better term, have you seen all the junk they sell to go around a pool?). You get the idea.

[sugarkane]

Hmmm, I wonder about that 50-1 ratio. One of my sites has approx 35-1, but the one that generates the (vast) bulk of revenue is closer to 300-1. Both sites use similar design and underlying programming, but the 300-1 site has much more non-sales content to attract visitors - over 50% of the site is free content rather than sales pitches.

I am happy with my main site's conversion ratio, but would like to hear other's experiences - maybe I'm blissfully ignorant and should be aiming for much higher?

[tedster]

I have a friend who teaches e-commerce at Penn State. Her main thesis is that most web sales happen in the course of looking for information, often in an unplanned for manner -- at present, "Going shopping" doesn't mean "logging in" for most households.

I definitely see this at work on my client sites. Lots of information on a site means a lower look-to-buy ratio, but higher actual dollar sales. And after all, you can only put dollars in the bank, not percentages.

Right now we have 4 ecommerce clients. We see more like 100 to 1 ratios on established sites -- sites that are getting a lot of return traffic. When they were brand new sites it was more like 300 or even 500 to 1. So my experience also says that 50 to 1 is not anywhere near a rule of thumb. Too many variables, including what industry and what price point.