Introduction
Footfall or foot traffic patterns of a street are a key aspect to the success of a retail store. While high footfall on the street is an indicator of anticipated success, the characteristics of the audience will be a deciding factor in customer conversions.
Incorporating inferences derived from foot traffic analysis of a site location can help retailers develop a comprehensive framework to drive profitability.
Discover five actionable strategies, derived from footfall analysis, that retailers can implement immediately to boost their revenue.
What is Retail Footfall?
Footfall or foot traffic measures the number of customers entering a store in a selected timeframe. Retailers leverage data derived from footfall estimation to determine strategies to improve sales, customer retention, and merchandise mix, among many other factors.
Foot Traffic V/S Relevant Foot Traffic
There is a caveat regarding having tons of people walking into your store. They have to be your target audience, i.e., they have to be people who will willingly spend money to buy your products.
Let’s illustrate the problems of opening the wrong store in an incorrect catchment area.
Consider the case of brand A. The leadership decides to expand into a new city. The leadership splits the expansion team into teams X and Y.
Team X goes down the tried and tested route of listening to the foot on the ground and agents to analyze probable locations. They scout a location next to a residential area where they have identified a high foot traffic area. The team opens a store in this location.
Team Y decided to invest in the capabilities of a location-analyzing model to identify catchment areas. The model determines locations with a high concentration of the target audience. The team opens a store in this location.
After a year of operation, the total revenue generated by both teams is tallied. To everyone’s surprise, the location chosen by Team Y generated more revenue than the location of Team X, even though Team X was in a high-traffic area.
This is because even though the location selected by Team X had a high footfall density. The number of people who purchased products from the store was far fewer than the ones shopping at the location selected by Team Y.
This example highlights the importance of both,
- A large footfall density
- Ensuring the presence of the target audience at the location
How is Footfall Measured?
In the good old days, employees of retail stores would stand outside a store with a clicker in their hand. Every time a customer enters the store, they push the clicker. A method that was rife with problems. This data collection method relies on the clicking speed of the employee. Also, during rush hours, the employee could undercount or overcount. Not an ideal solution to an important task like footfall estimation.
In another example, the owner of a famous traditional fast service restaurant in Southern India used to count the number of cars passing ahead of a potential spot to estimate footfall in that area.
Such data collection methods are subject to human biases and lack any evident logic behind footfall estimation.
Like every other process, technology has transformed footfall estimation as well.
Some of the tech applied to measure footfall include,
Infra-red Sensors
Stores place two sensors on either side of the entrance, with an infrared beam connecting the sensors. A customer entering the store interrupts the beam, increasing the customer count by one.
WiFi Connection Request
Connecting to the WiFi of a shop enables the store to capture the essential information about the customer. Including if they are returning customers, allowing for targeted marketing campaigns. WiFi logins also help the store generate a heatmap of the locations visited by the customer.
Eye in the Sky
Positioning a camera in the store helps track the customers entering the store while safeguarding their safety, as the camera system does not identify them. Furthermore, a camera connected to the POS system helps track the paying customers vs the window shoppers. A camera system also allows retailers to build heatmaps of the store, helping them adjust merchandise placement across the store.
Strategies to Improve Footfall and Sales
Now that we understand the what and how of footfall let us explore strategies to increase sales
Omnichannel Retail
One of the simplest ways to increase foot traffic is to allow customers to seamlessly transition from their online shopping experience to an offline store. Omnichannel retail highlights a positive feedback loop between the product and the customer. Offering extra benefits to online-oriented customers strengthens their perception of the store’s advantages.
Once a customer is in the store, retail brands can employ the psychology of the endowment effect to create a loyal customer for life.
Brands have reported an increase of 110% by just displaying a product in their physical store. Leveraging this natural requirement of customers to view a product helps increase the footfall in a store and sales.
Drawing customers to the retail store increases the store’s footfall density. Attracting the attention of potential customers on the street and influencing them to enter the retail store.
This creates a positive loop where every decision leads to increased sales at the store location.
An example of Omnichannel Retail is Buy Online and Pickup In-Store
Buy Online and Now Pick-up In Store
Providing customers with this option can generate a 40% increase in revenue due to the propensity of shoppers to spend more money when they come to pick up their orders from the store.
The flexibility of this option, along with the pay-later scheme, boosts customers’ spending capital and is one of the trends predicted to transform the retail business industry in India in 2024.
Incorporating this payment method into a retail store’s plan will leverage the increased foot traffic and convert it into revenue.
Similarly, brands can provide in-store returns to offer services that increase sales. The logic here is that when customers come to return the product, the sales executives can upsell the customer.
Effective Resource Management
Understanding the footfall patterns of a store and what goes on around it helps build a reliable persona for the target audience. Drawing inferences from this data allows stores to create a more structured marketing plan.
Retail stores should analyze the buying patterns of their customers. Not all customers who enter a store are paying customers. The team should analyze the footfall patterns along with the POS data to identify the timing patterns of their target audience.
For example, let’s consider the example of a resto-cafe if the store identifies an increase in customer density at 3 pm but registers an increase in actual sales at 6 pm. The store can invest resources to cater to the customers at 6 pm rather than 3 pm.
Captivating Window Displays
There is a scene in the famous romance-comedy Confessions of a Shopaholic. The displays behind the window at a store talk to the central character, begging her to take them home. While humorous, this is a genuine strategy that retail stores should implement today.
According to this blog, 86% of all shoppers consider an intriguing window display to have grabbed their attention.
A strategy that a retail brand can deploy today is to create a window display about a sale. With over 52% of shoppers admitting that they would take advantage of an instant sale, retailers should leverage the need for customers to achieve instant gratification, leading to impulse buying.
For example, a customer might be walking down a street and see an intriguing sale banner for a pair of socks. Even though the customer might not necessarily require the product, half of them will enter the store, and a few will buy it.
Improving Customer Experience
An optimal customer for a retailer converts instantly and fosters unwavering loyalty, ensuring repeated visits to the store.
But such cases are doubtful to occur. After all, we live in a world where customers are spoilt for choice. One of the ways a retailer can ensure repeat visits to their store is to provide an exemplary shopping experience for their customers.
Leveraging analysis of in-store footfall enables retailers to identify the locations in the store with poor customer reception.
Retailers can then place an employee or set up an automated kiosk in that location to increase engagement and drive conversion.
Long snaking queues are the bane of civilized societies. Applying inferences from footfall analysis enables retailers to consider opening a new check-out counter to help customers.
With footfall data, retailers can anticipate customer increases and reallocate their employees to better deal with the influx of customers.
For example, suppose the footfall shows an increase in the number of customers who visit the store regularly on a particular day at a predetermined time. In that case, the retailer can account for it and increase the staffing.
Conclusion
To recap the strategies that can increase sales of a retail store
- Omnichannel retail
- Effective resource managementOpening times
- Captivating window displays
- Improving customer experience
Retail footfall is an essential measure of the retail success of a location. But, a higher footfall density does not necessarily mean a profitable store location. The presence of a target audience, along with a high footfall density, are the contributing factors to the success of a retail location.
Leveraging inferences from data analytics helps retailers remove the guesswork from site location and provides a nuanced overview of the factors contributing to its success.
However, deducing pertinent clues from data requires the retailer to possess skillsets in data analytics.
But, could the retailer plot a pin on the location they are interested in and get a detailed report about the footfall heatmap of the catchment area?
Presenting RetailIQ
RetailIQ is a cutting-edge AI solution revolutionizing offline expansion for the retail section. It is built on top of extensive location data and brand data to give street-level answers to expansion problems.
RetailIQ is a powerful tool providing site recommendations to maximize success at the store level and minimize the risk of closure. It also helps identify the total addressable market, conduct competition analysis, better understand your target audience traits and their presence, and perform detailed site analysis and reports, all adding up to a successful expansion strategy.