How to Analyze Customer Movement with a People Counting System

People counting systems are doing for customer movement analyzation what smartphones did for communication. It’s a game changer that will revolutionize the way you currently look at your traffic flow, traffic trends and conversion rates.

Data is invaluable in the business decision-making process. Simple metrics like the amount of people who walk through your door each day, use your restroom facilities, or visit a specific area of your space can give you insight into fundamental business questions like:

• How many employees do I need to schedule for a shift?
• What are my security needs throughout the day?
• At what time should I restock and check restrooms?
• When is the optimal time to perform routine maintenance?
• Where should I set up new displays?
• What time can I turn down the heating or air conditioning?

Being able to accurately plan and predict the answers to those types of questions ultimately translates into tangible cost savings by eliminating overspending, overstaffing, or over allocating resources.

Identify Traffic Flow
The first step in determining customer movement within your building is to understand how traffic flows in and out. Use a people counter to monitor entrances and exits to start piecing together your traffic flow map and identify your most frequently used and least used doorways.

Perhaps you have a pretty good idea of where heavily trafficked areas are inside your stores but using a strategically placed people counter will give you concrete data to back up, or perhaps blow up, your theory. You may find the new display you thought was driving traffic, really isn’t performing like you imagined giving you the opportunity to make tweaks or rearrange.

Track Traffic Volume Trends
Once you get a baseline for measuring traffic flow you can begin analyzing customer movement trends. People counters not only measure volume but can identify slow traffic times and heavy periods by hour, day, week, month and year through reporting and analytics.

Plan staffing and anticipate inventory stock to accommodate for busy periods and plan extra promotions or events to drive traffic during seasonal slow downs. You can even use the data to perform A/B testing to determine customer responses through increases or decreases in traffic volume.

Calculate Your Conversion Ratio
Compare foot traffic data from a specified period of time to POS sales data to calculate your conversion ratio. This will help you quantify how many people you are converting from browsers to buyers.

Ultimately it is about ROI. You don’t want to waste time and resources on displays that don’t drive sales. When setting up new displays, use a people counter to measure how many people entered the new display compared to the sales figures for the product displayed.

Knowing your conversion ratio with the help of a people counter gives managers and owners visibility into the most efficient and profitable displays. Conversion ratio data can also be used to:

• Offer sales incentives to employees to get your conversion ratio up.
• Pinpoint time periods when conversions rates drop and take steps to address downturns.
• Determine your return on investment (ROI) for an event, promotion, or special program.

Customer Movement Data Benefits are Invaluable
Not using a people counting system to analyze traffic flow and volume is a little like using an abacus to do math. It can be done, but why would you want to?

Not to mention, the best benefits of people counting increase over time over time as you accumulate layers of data over weeks, months and years to identify high level variables in your traffic patterns. If used well, insight into historical customer movement data is going to ultimately affect both sides of your balance sheet by decreasing expenses and increasing revenue.