Footfall Analytics

The insights

Counting the number of people who enter your store tells you how many buying opportunities you have had in-store for any particular day. By dividing total transactional sales by footfall data for that same period, you can find out how many shoppers were persuaded to put their hand in their pocket and make a purchase: i.e. your conversion rate.

By measuring customer footfall and establishing your conversion rate, you can focus on key areas to improve store performance. Just some of the insights you can measure, include:

• Lowest performing hours
• Staff scheduling
• Effect on sales volumes
• Percentage of shoppers who purchase
• Underperforming stores
• Marketing effectiveness
• Real time footfall traffic

Technology

Footfall counters, also known as people counters or people counting software, come in a range of designs and products, each with key features to suit your individual needs. Ipsos Retail Performance is not constrained by one type of traffic monitoring technology and will select the best solution for accuracy, store fit and cost.

The technology includes:

• Thermal Cameras »
• Stereo Camera Monitoring »
• Facial Profiling »
• Active Infrared Counter »

Our project managers work closely with your shop fitters, designers, and IT departments to ensure a seamless installation with no compromise to your store design, visual appeal, or IT infrastructure.

The footfall counters come with full in-store, anti-tampering reporting and have intelligence built in so the system can record unique shopper group or individual measurements.

Once the footfall counters are installed, our advanced Data Analytics Centre remotely collects your footfall data daily directly via your own WAN/LAN system. (Landline modem and GSM options are also available).

The footfall data is then validated and verified by our frontline diagnostic team, using our cleansing software systems, so any abnormalities or spikes in the footfall analytics figures are picked up and adjusted accordingly. This means you can rest assured you are making key decisions on the best possible and most accurate information available.

Benefits for Store Managers:

• Match your staffing pattern with customer flow – Improve the customer experience by putting the right staff, in the right place at the right time so you can optimise your selling opportunities
• Identify your busiest days and when your power hours are – When are your peak opportunities for sales?
• Use customer counting to identify seasonal trends – Determine this year’s Christmas opening hours, based on last year’s retail customer tracking figures
• Find out if it’s more profitable to open a store later in the morning and/or trade later in the evening?
• Make more of marketing campaigns – By measuring shopper flow you can see how effective an advertising campaign was. Was the increase in sales a result of higher footfall or higher conversion rates? Did you recoup the cost of the campaign? Even if you didn’t, a closer look at footfall analytics figures before, during and after similar periods in previous years will provide interesting insight and comparison.

Benefits for Area Managers:

• Compare store performances – People counting can help you identify to which stores you should allocate budget or target with new store design concepts
• Measure impact of competitors – How has a competitor refit affected shopper flow of your nearest stores? How can you use this analysis to soften the impact on your stores?
• Identify best practices to share – Find out why stores with similar customer flow but different conversion rates are delivering diverse performances
• Deeper understanding of customers – Overlaying retail customer counting data with local demographics will give you a deeper understanding of your customers which could influence store layout and design

Benefits for Senior Managers:

• Test new store concepts – By measuring customer flow before and after a store refit, you can assess the real impact of a new design concept before you roll it to your full estate.
• Leverage your brand – Customer flow can be a powerful indicator of brand health and awareness
• Track your customer flow and brand performance against our comprehensive UK index, which monitors more than 1.2 billion retail footfall visits a year. Retail Traffic Index
• Maximise product launch opportunities – Does the impact of a product launch vary depending on the time of year?
• Measure the effect of Omni-channel on retail footfall – Are customers buying online and then bringing it back to the store? What increase in customer flow does click and collect have? By customer counting at store pick up points, you can subtract pre-ordered sales footfall from store footfall for a true conversion rate.
• Stay ahead of your competitors – With our industry specific Retail Traffic Indices, find out if your competitors’ customer traffic flow tracked yours. Are your footfall levels decreasing year-on-year while your competitor’s footfall is increasing? If so, what are they doing differently
• Evaluate loyalty schemes – Do they drive additional footfall to your stores? Compare customer flow to loyalty card usage. Are they buying or simply enjoying the event?