Footfall is defined as the number of people, or traffic, entering a store, and is an important indicator of how successful a company’s marketing is at bringing customers into stores. Understanding footfall also means you can work out other key metrics such as conversion rate and average transaction value, and can help you determine demand and staffing levels.
What is footfall analysis?
In order to increase your sales and ultimately profit, it is important that you have a way of measuring and analysing your footfall. At its most basic level footfall analysis means counting the people who visit your store. The old-fashioned way was to have an employee stand at the entrance with a customer counter – a manual clicker that they used to keep track of the number of store visitors.
Newer systems use video cameras, thermal imaging, infrared beams, and facial profiling to help retailers gain a better understanding of how people move around their stores. With hourly analysis you can capture the flow of potential customers and identify customer buying behaviour and trends.
The benefits of footfall analysis
Ipsos Retail Performance, a leading global retail consultant, that provides insights into customer behaviour has outlined some of the key benefits of footfall analytics.
The company says that footfall analysis allows you to:
- Determine in-store activity
- Assess the impact, performance and success of marketing initiatives
- Tailor staffing schedules according to footfall patterns
- Improve store layout and ease customer navigation
- Optimize store performance
- Maximize sales potential
- Improve peel off rates
- Boost sales productivity and identify conversion rate profiles and patterns
- Improve performance by identifying weaker performing stores and implementing training programs
- Boost ROI by monitoring the success of marketing campaigns
- Gain a deeper insight by reviewing changes in sales volumes and the consequences of fluctuating footfall levels
- Make instant operational changes with real-time traffic data to boost conversion
- Instant access to accurate and reliable data for confident decision-making
Store managers can use the data collected to build an accurate picture of behaviour to help them make strategic decisions that can improve the instore experience and turn potential customers into loyal shoppers.
Check out the 5 key strategies to drive footfall to your stores
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For all but the smallest stores, counting visits manually is virtually impossible. And in order to conduct a robust analysis you will need to do more than just people counting. Some of the things you will need to consider are:
- The number of people who enter your store
- The number of people who walk by without entering
- Unique vs repeat visitors
- The frequency of repeat visitors
- The average time visitors spend in you store
- The percentage of visitors who left your store within 5 minutes (known as bounce rate)
If you want to collect accurate data over and above the number of people who enter your store, you will need to invest in technology, so you don’t need to rely on manual counting. Your choice of technology will depend on the size of your store, your store layout, number and size of entrances, windows and overall aesthetics.
- Infrared counters– infrared cameras emit a beam across a point of entry, and each time the beam is broken it records a count. Intelligent systems will include an algorithm that enable the counter to determine whether the cause of the beam being broken is a genuine shopper and discount other possibilities such as a child running in and out of a door.
- Thermal cameras– thermal cameras work by monitoring a difference in temperature. They pick up a customer’s body heat and compare it to the ambient temperature of your store. They are simple to install and provide accurate data that is able to count both individuals and groups of shoppers.
- Stereo camera monitoring– stereo cameras provide highly accurate data and are able to overcome some of the issues of previous generation technology, such as shadow counting, mutli-zoning capabilities, and high-traffic counting.
- Facial profiling– for retailers wanting micro-analysis, face detection software can provide some of the most accurate analytics and shopper intelligence. Modern facial cameras can not only count the visitors to your store but also determine other metrics such as gender and age.
- WiFi analytics– WiFi will not count your store visitors in the same that cameras do but they are able to provide some deep analytics into their behaviour.
Most shoppers own smartphones so you can measure retail traffic by collecting anonymous customer data from WiFi enabled smartphones. The phone will constantly emit ‘pings’ when searching for available WiFi connections. WiFi based people counters use sensors to detect these pings and track each smartphone – or shopper – as they move around and interact with your store.
WiFi analytics allow you to measure your unique and repeat visitors and track customers as they move around the store. You can also record the number of people who walk past your store without entering, and your bounce rate. Unlike some of the camera technology used for footfall analysis you don’t need to worry about data from staff members as WiFi counters can recognise these ‘persistent devices’ and exclude them from the data.
If you have stores in multiple locations, WiFi counters can measure patterns between separate stores and tell you whether customers visit more than one location and the time between visits.
While not all shoppers carry smartphones with a large enough sample size the data collected will be statistically significant for you to conduct footfall analysis And data from WiFi counters is completely anonymous so you should not have any concerns around privacy.
The data collected from counting footfall alone can’t tell you how to run your business. However, analysing the data should provide you with lots of information to guide you in decision making. In particular it should give you insights into customer engagement and help you improve their retail experience to keep them returning to your store and purchasing more products.
Getting to know footfall is important … but what are your customers doing before and after their visits?
There is a huge industry related to footfall analytics, but few players in the market focus their efforts on actually bringing that footfall into stores.
To drive footfall to your store you need to find potential customers, and to do that you need to take the following into consideration:
- Improve your online visibility
- Run local advertising campaigns
- Improve your visual identity
- Invest in brand awareness
You also need to think about what customers will be doing once they have left your store, so don’t forget about the after-sales experience. Customers may leave reviews online, share their experiences on social media, or post pictures of your store or products. Being aware of what customers do once they left your store needs to be part of your reputation management strategy.
If you would like to know more about driving footfall to your store request a live demo.
FAQs
Footfall data can help the real estate industry gain insight into the best investment opportunities within a specific area. The raw data comprises mobility information through GPS, visitor trends, and market analysis.
How do you analyze footfall? ›
How to calculate footfall
- The number of people who enter your store.
- The number of people who walk by without entering.
- Unique vs repeat visitors.
- The frequency of repeat visitors.
- The average time visitors spend in you store.
- The percentage of visitors who left your store within 5 minutes (known as bounce rate)
To calculate the footfall ratio, divide the number of people entering the store by the total amount of time, then multiply by 24.
Is footfall a KPI? ›
Footfall or store traffic
One of the main basic KPIs, that help us to know other results of our business, is the Footfall, also known as the store traffic. It has to be with to all the clients that put a step on your sales point, whether they buy something or not.
What are the benefits and importance of sales analysis? ›
Advantages of Sales Analytics
It helps the salesperson find vital trends, dig deep into data, and increase accuracy in forecasting results. The team can customize their efforts and work with high-value prospects thanks to accurate analysis. It also helps find new options for the organization to explore.
What is meaning of foot fall and how it is useful? ›
footfall noun (BUSINESS)
the number of people who go into a shop or business in a particular period of time: Footfall is an important indicator of how successful a company's advertising is at bringing people into its shops.
What does footfall measure? ›
What is footfall? Footfall, sometimes referred to as shopper counting, store traffic, or people counting, measures the number of people entering a shopping mall or store. Footfall is usually counted per hour, day, week, month, or year.
What is footfall reporting? ›
A footfall report gives you quick and useful insights into the activity patterns of shoppers.
What should I look for when Analysing sales? ›
Several elements of your sales performance analysis that can lead to more accurate forecasts include average sales revenue per accounting period, average customer acquisition per period, average production costs, average marketing and advertising spend per period and overall profitability from sales.
How do you track customer value? ›
Seven Variables for Your Customer Value Index
- Total purchases over their lifetime.
- Average purchase value.
- Purchase frequency.
- Number of products/service purchased.
- Time between each purchase.
- Referrals generated.
- Overall length of time as a customer.
Identify the amount of revenue that your business earned from that customer during that year. Divide that amount by your business's total revenue for that year. Multiply that number by 100 to complete the calculation. The final number will be your customer concentration level expressed as a percentage.
What is the formula of customer count? ›
Customer retention rate measures the number of customers a company retains over a given period of time. Calculate retention rate with this formula: [(E-N)/S] x 100 = CRR. Any company that wants to succeed must keep a close eye on its customer retention metrics.
What are the 3 recommended KPI categories? ›
The categories are outcome, activity, and effectiveness. I'm going to explore each of these types and explain the importance of representing them all in your KPI structure so that they drive execution in your business.
What are 4 examples of key performance metrics to track? ›
Productivity, profit margin, scope and cost are some examples of performance metrics that a business can track to determine if target objectives and goals are being met.
Why customer need analysis is crucial for sales? ›
A customer needs analysis should provide insight into your customer's pain points and challenges. It can inform all of your internal teams ‒ from sales and marketing to customer support ‒ to create data-driven strategies to improve your business.
What is the significance of customer analysis? ›
A well-planned customer analysis helps predict customers' reactions to the product, services, AD campaigns, and brand adaptation. In addition, it helps understand customer experiences and satisfaction. You can learn more about customer analytics, data analytics and related topics through data analytics courses.
What is the aim of a sales analysis? ›
Sales analysis is reviewing your sales data to identify trends and patterns. Sales data can help you make better decisions about your product, pricing, promotions, inventory, customer needs other aspects of your business. Sales analysis can be as simple as reviewing your sales figures regularly.
What is an example of a footfall? ›
The number of consumers entering a store or shopping area measured against time, such as per hour, day, week, or month. The sound of footsteps (or just one footstep). Somebody may say, for example: “That's John going down the stairs. I can recognize his footfall.”
What is another word for footfall? ›
synonyms for footfall
On this page you'll find 34 synonyms, antonyms, and words related to footfall, such as: stride, footprint, footstep, gait, impression, and mark.
What should a customer analysis include? ›
This aims to understand wants, needs, pain points, and objectives. Typically organizations that conduct customer analysis use a variety of methods to do so. These methods include analyzing first-party data (such as CRM or Marketing data), focus groups, interviews, market data, existing customer feedback, and more.
Leading indicators for sales revenue might be Pipeline Volume or Number of Calls/Meeting/Emails per sales rep. By tracking these metrics, you can monitor sales activity on an ongoing basis and see if your team needs to increase outreach efforts to meet your Deals Closed goal.
What are the 4 types of customer value? ›
The four types of value include: functional value, monetary value, social value, and psychological value. The sources of value are not equally important to all consumers.
What are the three 3 ways to capture value from customers? ›
e.g you can't change gross margin, there are only three strategies that you can use to impact customer value: Sales: Increase per customer sales. Loyalty: Retain customers longer. Cost: Lower the cost to serve.
What is the rule of thumb for customer concentration? ›
One rule of thumb says that if your biggest five customers make up 25 percent or more of your revenue, your customer concentration is high. Another simple measure says that, if any one customer represents 10 percent or more of revenue, you are at risk of elevated customer concentration.
What is the ideal customer concentration? ›
The rule of thumb, especially for more mature businesses, is that no more than 10% of your revenue should be coming from one customer. Similarly, no more than 25% of your total revenue should be dependent on your top 5 customers.
What is a significant customer concentration? ›
Customer concentration occurs when a single customer or client accounts for 10% or more of your revenue, or when your largest five customers account for 25% or more of your revenue. When a business is overly-reliant on a small group of customers or clients, its revenue will be highly sensitive.
How do you calculate customer service KPI? ›
Calculate this customer service KPI by dividing the total time customers wait in call queues by the total number of customer calls answered.
How do I calculate number of customers in Excel? ›
Use the COUNT function to get the number of entries in a number field that is in a range or array of numbers. For example, you can enter the following formula to count the numbers in the range A1:A20: =COUNT(A1:A20).
What are the 4 P's of KPI? ›
For marketers, the best guidance for choosing KPIs comes directly from your Intro to Marketing class: the four P's. For you non-marketers out there, those would be product, price, place, and promotion.
What are the 4 quadrants of KPI? ›
Anyway, the four KPIs that always come out of these workshops are:
- Customer Satisfaction,
- Internal Process Quality,
- Employee Satisfaction, and.
- Financial Performance Index.
The Four Perspectives of BSC and their Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) Examples. As mentioned earlier, there are four perspectives of balanced scorecards: finance, Customer, process, and Learning & Growth. These perspectives include a mix of financial and non-financial indicators that aid in the growth of a business.
What are the top 3 KPIs metrics that are critical for customer support to track? ›
6 KPIs for measuring customer service performance
- Average resolution time.
- Occupancy.
- Average first response time.
- First contact resolution.
- Tickets handled per hour vs. tickets solved per hour.
- Customer satisfaction score.
Time, cost and quality are all factors of effectiveness.
What does footfall mean in the hospitality industry? ›
What Is Footfall? In business, footfall is defined as the number of people entering an establishment at any given time.
What does footfall show? ›
Footfall, sometimes referred to as shopper counting, store traffic, or people counting, measures the number of people entering a shopping mall or store. Footfall is usually counted per hour, day, week, month, or year.
What is footfall monitoring? ›
Footfall monitoring describes the use of electronic devices to count the number of people moving in and out of a space.
