In the eCommerce world, everyone is looking for a benchmark, a standard from which they can measure their own site against. Are my 10,000 monthly visits average for my industry or am I at the bottom of the barrel? What’s the deal with my 1% conversion rate? Ideally, you’d like to compare yourself to the competing companies in your industry. So why not figure out what they’re earning? Here’s a great way to estimate what your competitors are making on a monthly basis:

Your Competitors Monthly Visits

There are some great tools on the web that can estimate the traffic of a site:

Compete.com
Quantcast.com

Both estimate the monthly traffic of a site (only U.S. traffic). I’ve seen some sites where they’re dead on, and some sites where they only estimate 30% of the actual traffic. On average, they seem to estimate a little less than half of a site’s actual traffic, so use these tools wisely.

Your best bet is to plug in your own site into these tools and see what numbers you get. Base your competitors traffic estimate on the same formula. Example: If compete.com says your site gets 5,000 hits a month and you actually get 10,000 (double), then simply double the estimate that compete.com gives for your competition.

Your Competitors Conversion Rate

Looking at todays (11/2/2007) Fireclick Conversion Rate Index, I see an average conversion rate of 2.30% across the board. This rate is taken from a number of eCommerce sites across the web and is one of the most accurate figures that we can access.

Fireclick also provides conversion rates by industry. Below are todays conversion rates, by industry:

Fashion and Apparel: 2.4%
Electronics: 0.5%
Catalog: 7.7%
Specialty: 1.8%
Outdoor and Sports: 0.6%
Software: 3.80%

Base the conversion rate of your competitor on these industry averages; if you or your competitors don’t fall into these categories, then use the overall average conversion rate of 2.30%.

Your Competitors Average Order Value

Use the following averages, as reported here to determine your competitors Average Order Value (AOV)

Computer Hardware: $584.87
Event & Movie Tickets: $121.60
Automotive: $119.23
Office Supplies: $102.47
Consumer Electronics: $99.12
Child/Baby Care: $86.13

If you or your competitors don’t fall into any of the above categories, use the overall average of $185.87.

Here’s the formula:
Monthly Visits x Conversion Rate x Average Order Value (AOV) = Estimated Monthly Earnings

This is a quick and simple way to estimate your competitors monthly earnings – if anyone has other suggestions to add to this formula, please contribute!