Mastering Foot Traffic Data: Collection, Analysis, and Strategic Insights for Retail
Foot traffic data enables businesses, such as retail stores, to measure and understand consumer behavior. The foot traffic metric reveals different customer patterns, including their favorite visiting days and average shopping time. This detailed article defines this concept and reveals top collection and analysis methods. Read on to comprehend how it works.
What is Foot Traffic Data?
Foot traffic data is a rich dataset that reveals the movement patterns of people in physical business locations, such as shopping malls, restaurants, and retail shops. Another term for it is mobility data.
Foot traffic data shows the number of visitors a retail store gets per day. It also reveals the duration of each visit and the exact areas customers like to frequent. Retail foot traffic data analysis can enable one to review their marketing strategies and find lucrative new business locations.
Further, these analytics can expose the methods that competitors use to acquire a larger market share and reveal the ever-changing customer trends.
How is foot traffic data collected?
Foot traffic data relies on the accuracy of the gathered information. Thus, retail stores use these technologically advanced techniques:
Mobile Devices – Smartphones and other mobile devices with a GPS feature simplify the foot traffic data collection process. The GPS data discloses real-time consumer behaviors around a shop. You can see the number of pedestrians who get into your shop and those who pass by it. GPS data can show how long a customer stays and which route they use to enter your mall or retail store.
Wi-Fi Connectivity – Another source of foot traffic data is Wi-Fi. A retailer invites prospects to connect to their in-house Wi-Fi network. When a prospect connects, the network keeps a record. While this method is reliable, it has its downsides. Some passersby may connect to your Wi-Fi without getting into the mall, causing overcounting. Others may not use the signal at all, triggering under-counting.
Strategically Installed Hardware – The counting sensors and CCTV cameras are the most common tools for collecting foot traffic data. Retailers install them in strategic positions to consistently study how prospects flow. Sensors can help the management determine areas requiring the allocation of more resources or more catchy layouts to attract customers.
As retailers select their foot traffic data analysis tools, they should consider the legal implications. They must collect data anonymously and handle personally identifiable information with extreme caution.
Foot Traffic Analysis Use Cases
Foot traffic data has these use cases:
- Understand the Performance of a Current Retail Store – If your sales and profits have been flopping, you should analyze your foot traffic. It will disclose if your customers have found an alternative nearby and help you strategize your operations afresh.
- Decide when and where to open a New Branch – Foot traffic data can help you spot lucrative new business locations. It can facilitate your expansion plan.
- Identify and Assess Changing Retail Trends – Consumer behavior evolves daily, and the analysis of foot traffic data can help you identify emerging trends.
- Alter Store Layouts – Store layouts affect how customers behave around various business locations. By assessing foot traffic data, you can measure the impact of your current store layouts. If necessary, you can make them more attractive to lure customers inside the mall.
- Review Your Marketing Campaigns – Foot traffic data analytics can let you measure the performance of existing marketing campaigns. If you are unhappy with it, you can plan your marketing afresh.
- Reschedule Workers – The areas that customers frequent have many staffing needs. You can only learn this truth via proper foot traffic analytics.
- Understand Trade Area Better – A business can use mobility data to study its prospective customers well. This data can show their origins, preferences, and demographics.
How to calculate foot traffic for a physical location
The analysis of foot traffic data has gradually evolved from the traditional collection and calculation techniques. Manual counting of prospects that enter the shop or pass by its entrance was difficult and inaccurate.
While foot traffic outdoor sensors and surveillance cameras are more advanced than manual counters, they require strategic positioning to work. Additionally, counting mats and clipboards are inaccurate.
Mobile devices are more advanced than manual counters but can still produce inaccurate data. If you depend on one mobile service provider, for instance, you could miss the benefit of exploring many foot traffic data collection methods.
So, what do retailers use nowadays to calculate the actual foot traffic and attribute marketing ad spending? Today, retail enterprises use GIS (Geographic Information System). These devices combine mobile GPS data and Point of Interest (POI) data.
They enable you to track foot traffic areas near you, customers’ origins and routes, stores worth competing with, etc. Some GIS tools leverage not just smartphone GPS data but also advanced artificial intelligence algorithms.
These increase the sample size by affiliating with more than one mobile service provider. By revealing traffic peak times in anticipated locations; these GIS tools facilitate efficient resource allocation, customer demand satisfaction, and customer behavior tracking.
How to get foot traffic data for competitor stores
How to find foot traffic data for your competition is easy. Competitors aim to attract the same customers you want. By discovering their store visits, you can assess the number and type of customers they attract.
One way to collect this data is to install outdoor sensors at their physical locations. Another way is to gain access to their Wi-Fi records. Access to this private data is possible now due to advanced technological tools. GIS tools, for instance, enable you to gather foot traffic data relating to a given geographic location. They provide a ”cross-visitation” feature that shows other places your prospects visit.
You can then evaluate this data to understand specific buyer behavior and review your retention strategies. Advanced GIS tools can let you categorize your competitors’ customer visits based on retail business type, venue, and brand.
They also offer a customer retention feature that allows you to study the behavior of your recurring customers. If the foot traffic data reveals a reduction in recurrent customers, the cause could be a new competitor a few meters down the road. If you retain more customers, your current marketing campaign may be better than your competitor’s.
How to analyze mall foot traffic
Mall foot traffic data analytics is crucial to overcoming competition. As a mall owner, you can employ traditional methods of assessing foot traffic. While these are affordable, they can provide little information that might be inaccurate.
Technologically advanced analysis methods are more reliable, as they provide real-time insights. You can then use these data insights to make intelligent decisions about operations and marketing. One of the best foot traffic data trackers is Wi-Fi.
Retailers discover their potential customer’s behaviors and movements with Wi-Fi tracking. They allow them to connect to the Wi-Fi with their smartphones and then check their favorite routes to the mall, shopping durations, preferred product shelves, etc.
Outdoor surveillance cameras and people counting sensors are hardware tools that capture and assess customer movements. These work only if retailers install them in high-traffic areas. GIS tools integrating different mobile service providers and cutting-edge AI algorithms have made the work more effective and easier.
These software-based tools can enable mall owners to assess their foot traffic and competitors. These advanced foot traffic data analytics allow retailers to modify their store layouts and advertising plans to attract more customers.
Conclusion
Foot traffic data analysis is your recipe for success in retail trading. It can let you record the customers who enter your retail store and those who visit your competitor. This mobility data can help you manage your resources more effectively. Lastly, you can update your marketing plan and locate other profitable business locations.
