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Internet Retailer.com recently revealed a list of the Top 10 online retailers with the highest conversion rates in March. The research was conducted amongst online retailers with at least 500,000 unique visitors. Office Depot, QVC, VistaPrint, Roamans & Lands End made the Top 5 with conversion rates over 15%.

Disclaimer: The user conversion on one of these sites is so compelling, it prompted me to purchase an item, as I was typing up this post. Read on to find out which retailer’s user conversion struck my fancy.

The full list includes:

Office Depot - 20.9% QVC - 19% VistaPrint - 18.3% Roamans - 18.1% Lands’ End - 16.2% eBay - 15.7% 1-800-Flowers.com - 15.5% eBags.com - 15.3% L.L. Bean - 14.6% Pottery Barn Kids - 14.2%

A quick visit to these sites reveals several common user conversion strategies:

Time sensitive Specials: (Examples: 10% Until 5/28 on Office Depot, 4 Hours Only Sale on QVC.Com)

Offering time sensitive specials to your visitors encourage them to buy..and buy quickly. If they feel they are getting a good deal for buying now, that may be all the incentive they need to click “Purchase”.

Give something away for free: (Example: Free Business Cards @ Vista Print.com)

Believe it or not, you CAN get 250 free business cards with Vista Print. While many shady online retailers use the “Free” catch phrase in a bait and switch move, Vista Print actually delivers on their promise, which builds trust in the company. Consumers who receive the free business cards are more likely to return to buy future office goods, because they already know what they are getting with VistaPrint.

Clear Navigation: (Example: 1800flowers.com and PotteryBarnkids.com)

1800flowers delivers a user-friendly text based navigation. Whether you are shopping by occasion or specific flower, it is all ready navigable from the home page, no need to navigate through dozens of categories. Pottery Barn Kids also does this well, their homepage is segmented by the types of rooms to be decorated: girl rooms, boy rooms, baby rooms and play rooms.

Engage the audience (Example: LLBean.com)

LL Bean features a compelling video of family and friends enjoying the outdoors in LL Bean gear. The video is soo cute, I just purchased the french sailor’s quarter zip pullover for my son, yes I really did!

User conversion theory is not an exact science, it is more of a consumer experiment. As a website owner, it is essential to continually try new methods of conversion, measure your return on those strategies and tweak as needed.

Morgan Stanley has just revealed last month’s Internet Trends Report which has some very intriguing statistics regarding Social Networking sites.

Here are some of the highlights from the 72 page document:

• 6 out of the TOP 10 Most visited sites on the Internet ARE Social Networking sites. YouTube, Facebook, Hi5, Live.com, MySpace and Wikipedia all made the list.
• 5 out of the 6 didn’t even make the list in 2005. Within 3 years our internet experience has been drastically changed by the introduction of social media, networking and sharing sites.
• in 2008 YouTube has surpassed Google and Yahoo in number of Page Views
• Facebook has grown by 305% - largely in part to it’s ’stickiness’, open application platform, and recent open invitation strategy.
• Top 5 Facebook Applications are: Superwall, Top Friends, FunWall, SuperPoke and Movies.
• Top 5 Searches according to Google Zeitegist: iPhone, Badoo, Facebook, Daily Motion & Webkinz.
• Amazon.com is still the Largest Online Retailer
• Internet Advertising spend is up 26% making it the biggest advertising mover.
• 80% of Internet Users deem the internet as an important source of information, where as radio and newspaper only received 63% importance.

View the full Morgan Stanley Internet Trend Report:

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Last week, I wrote a blog post about Twitter, the fast growing microblogging platform that allows users to blog 140 character ‘tweets’ to their closest friends, followers and yes, even strangers. Twitter, although, originally created to keep up with what your friends are up to, has quickly become an easy way for companies to monitor their reputation online.

Zappos.com, one of the largest online shoe merchants, known for its outstanding customer service and amazingly large selection of shoes (personal experience) has recently taken to Twitter. They have set up a Twitter feed page on their site which follows online mentions about the company and ‘tweets’ made by their employees.

Zappos.com has been the online sweetheart of many bloggers.  With amazing customer service stories like, I Heart Zappos, this one and one more, it’s hard to NOT love them.  Zappos.com did not set out to win over bloggers, they set out to win over their customers…and some of them just so happened to be bloggers. With one flower bouquet, Zappos.com managed to win over thousands of bloggers and fans.  According to Yahoo Site Explorerr the “I Heart Zappos” post currently has close to 2,000 inbound links! Talk about free publicity!

As a company committed to customer service, it is a smart move for Zappos to embrace Twitter. Following their company’s brand online will help them pro-actively remedy any negative mentions online and humanize the company by  following their employee’s tweets.

I’ve been a long time fan of Twitter, mostly to keep up on breaking news and find out what my friends are doing, however, this morning I read a great article which made me realize how powerful of a tool Twitter actually is. James Buck, a UC Berkely student, was arrested in Egypt. Instead of a phone call, Buck used his phone to post a message to his Twitter account: Short and simple, it read, “Arrested.” Within 24 hours, Buck’s Twitter followers had managed to involve UC Berkely, the US Embassy and get him freed. Another young life spared, thanks to modern conveniences of Social Media.

Twitter, ironically enough,isn’t just for busting yourself out of the clink. It can also help you save the life of your business. Twitter is a microblogging platform which allows users to post 140 character ‘tweets’ to hundreds of their closest friends…or whoever chooses to follow them. More and more companies are using Twitter to monitor their online reputation. Using Twitter tools like TweetScan you can set up alerts to email or text you if and when your business name is mentioned on Twitter.

American Airlines suffered a PR nightmare last week when it cancelled over 3000 flights. You can just imagine the amount of negative twitters which were tweeted during the whole debacle. The negative press and online complaints forced American to shift into reputation management mode. They quickly reacted by starting a blog, addressing customer concerns and issues.

By monitoring what people are saying about your business online, you can be pro-active in your reputation management, fending off naysayers as the arise.