Every so often we like to share some of the successes others are experiencing online. In particular, we like to highlight examples of folks doing the types of things we talk about here and the results they get.

As usual, Internet Retailer is a great place to find such stories:

• Bath & Body Works used analytics to learn more about their customers. They also used data from an analytics package to discover which parts of their site needed work (where customers were leaving, giving up, or getting lost). As a result, 13% more visitors reach a product page, site-search results in 31% more conversions, and average order sizes are up. Read the full story about Bath & Body Works…
  
• By diversifying it’s revenue streams, Zappos.com has reached a customer milestone: 6 million customers. Not only that, but the company also says that 3/4 (75%) of their transactions are from repeat customers. With an estimated $800 million in sales for 2007, that means one of two things: lots of customers are make a few repeat purchases or a few customers are making a lot of repeat purchases. Either one is good! Read the full story about Zappos.com…
• RugSale.com simplified and streamlined it’s checkout process and benefited from a 20% reduction in customers leaving the site during checkout and a 21% increase in average ticket. The original process took a whopping seven steps to complete! But the company was able to reduce it to two steps by eliminating duplicate content, removing some parts, and condensing other aspects of the checkout together. Read the full story about RugSale.com…
• A great way to drive traffic to your site and build brand awareness is to run a contest of some sort. GolfBalls.com isn’t just running a contest, either. They’re running a contest that’s been so successful that the company has had to add more servers to their arsenal just to keep up with the traffic. GolfBalls.com says the idea behind the contest is threefold: 1) build up the customer email list, 2) raise awareness of GolfBalls.com, and 3) raise awareness of the product featured in the contest. A customized widget that lets people share the contest with others on their website or social network profile not only builds links to Golfballs.com, but also drives in more traffic as well! Read the full story about GolfBalls.com…

As I’ve said in the past, one of the best ways to learn and come up with ideas for your own site is to look at what others have done. In this batch of success stories we’ve got increased conversions, massive sales, repeat business, successful use of analytics data and contests that require their own servers because of huge traffic numbers.

If you ask me… those are all good things.