What's a good conversion rate?

From the MineThatData blog comes a nice analysis of Internet Retailer Top 500 e-commerce stores conversion rates.

Catalogers have the highest website conversion rate at 4.89%, followed by Web-Only businesses at 3.92%, Retail Chains at 3.05% and Consumer Brand Manufacturers at 2.99%.

Of course, any professional will tell you comparing conversion rates is one of the sillier ways to waste time in analytics. Traffic generation techniques are a key reason why converion varies. You might be fighting for traffic in a very competitive area, grabbing cheap volume terms tangential to your pitch and long tail keywords, or you might be trying to max out your sales volume given a solid investment in inventory. The quality of the traffic is a very strong differentiator.

Still, what's a good conversion rate is a question I receive all the time, so having some "big company" metrics is a nice contribution to the zeitgeist. In addition, this range of conversion jives pretty well with my experience. Branded terms can easily have conversion rates at 5% given that the users are either returning visitors or otherwise referrals.