In the retail world, the success of the business is determined by the foot traffic attracted which leads to potential sales. Thus, foot traffic is one of the most important factors in retail, it determines the number of customers and sales the store may receive.
The equation is simple: the more customers that visit your physical stores, the more sales you stand to make while connecting and bonding with shoppers in-person to increase chances of customer loyalty. But how can you actually get more customers?
As you dive into this blog, you will know that the easiest way to increase a store’s foot traffic is by measuring it, you can only improve what you already know. Counting and tracking your visitors can play a role in identifying shoppers seasonality, rush and low hours, and marketing activations impact on stores. Nowadays, there are tools that help managers get their job done without resorting to using manual counters and excel spreadsheets, let me tell you more.
The importance of foot traffic in retail stores
Foot traffic is the number of customers that enter your physical stores, which we have established before: the more the customers, the more chances of sales.
The numbers of foot traffic can be monitored manually using counters digitally by using people counters/ footfall counters and retail tracking softwares. There are several factors that can impact a business foot traffic, but most importantly the strategic location of the store.
The store’s physical location will determine the numbers of outside traffic and the effectiveness of window display marketing. Is the area where the store located where the target customer lives or can visit frequently? Is the area highly competitive? You can have a look at accurate numbers on the store’s outside traffic by installing a people counter, as they can detect passing by traffic up to 100 meters.
Why Track and Monitor Foot Traffic
Tracking foot traffic will equip you with more valuable information to make informed data-driven decisions to run business operations better and generate more sales.
By tracking traffic you can determine the store busiest days and hours, and schedule staff accordingly for a better customer experience and service. By measuring traffic, you can keep an eye on staff performance and see if the employees are turning these opportunities into sales.
The data will not only provide you with the number of visitors counted, you can also get more insights on external factors like the impact of the latest marketing activities to the number of visitors and sales generated.
The more data that you have to interpret, the better you can detect patterns and predict future trends, the easier you can improve operations and measure overall store’s performance and be more cost-effective with marketing activations and staffing schedule.
There are additional benefits to tracking foot traffic, here are some:
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Gain customers insights
Tracking foot traffic will enable managers to get a better understanding of who their customers are and what their buying patterns and how they behave in store (Shopping journey). depending on the data that is being collected and analyzed, your can know the following:
- The days and hours visitors visit the store
- How long is the average visit duration
- Your in-store conversion rate (number of sales compared to the number of foot traffic)
- Number of outside traffic (passing by) entering your store
- Visitors traffic patterns, including rush hours and low hours
Make informed business decisions
Tapping into valuable data over business key metrics and activities will enable informed business decisions over:
Staffing: make sure you have the right number of employees associated on the sales floor during peak hours, and avoid over staffing during slow hours and seasonality. By this, managers will reduce unnecessary operational costs.
Inventory planning: measuring visitors traffic will help to project sales and predict the amount of inventory stock needed to avoid lost sales and stockouts, this will also prevent over-stocking.
Sales strategies: if you know customers’ peak shopping days and hours in your stores, you can strategize discounts and special offers according to the high foot traffic you will be receiving. This strategy is used to sell more inventory and reach more customers.
Marketing strategies: all types of marketing campaigns can be tracked and monitored, from email to digital. Promote your upcoming events and sales promotions and track in-store foot traffic to measure the campaign success and improve future marketing strategies.
Growth opportunities: If the ultimate goal is to increase sales and revenue, tracking foot traffic and retail activities will give a clear big picture on how to replicate success in multiple locations by using the information that you have gained over your customers to make driven expansion plans.
How to measure foot traffic
Old time consuming methods like standing at the door and manually counting visitors coming into your store is in the past. Now there are many tools that can help you achieve your goals in calculating foot traffic and collect information about customers who visit your brick-and-mortar locations.
The data value is in helping you make the right decision, scheduling the right number of staff, improving store operations, promoting the right campaigns that will lead to an increase in sales, and ensuring that the store layout is designed in a way that facilitates customer engagement.
Linkers Cx People Counter
Our people counter is integrated with Ai technology that will track visitors and customers and provide valuable retail analytics, enabling zone analytics (heat maps), queue analytics, wifi-counting, demographics analysis, and automated marketing.
Zone analytics will help you visualize the visitors flow and in-store journey while demographic analysis will determine if you are attracting the right customer to your stores. Create personalized campaigns and run targeted social media campaigns.
Track your foot traffic and get real-time occupancy counts, Request your free demo today!
