What do Proflowers.com, Office Depot, Lands End, Oriental Trading Company, and eBay have in common? They’re all among the top 10 online retailers by conversion rate for April 2008. According to Grok.com.

This is a fascinating list because these retailers all have different brands in different industries. The surprising one to me is eBay. I thought it would be higher up the list. But it’s interesting that Office Depot is second on the list and equally interesting that Proflowers is the highest. It’s not February, after all, when lovers are apt to send their beloveds flowers for their kisses. But it is spring and that may have something to do with it.

What’s even more interesting in the Grok.com report is what follows the list of the top 10 retailers. Remember, that list is by conversion rate. But Grok.com includes other benchmarks that are noteworthy. Among them:

• Page Views Per Session
• Product Page Views Per Session
• Average Time on Site (in seconds)
• Average Items/Order
• Shopping Cart Conversion Rate
• Shopping Cart Abandonment
• New Visitor Conversion Rate
• Referral Conversion Rate

All of these are important metrics to measure, even for a local retail business. If you are not looking at these statistics for your local retails website then you should be. And you should also be comparing them to your in-store statistics. Do you know what products sell better online versus in your store? Do you know how long visitors stay on your website and whether they were referred by someone else? Do you know if your online purchasers are local or people located elsewhere on the globe? If you don’t know these things about your website visitor then you need to start measuring the statistics on your website and looking at it a little closer. Online retail sales are going up and it’s important - even for local retailers - to know how people are using their websites.