Tech Trends: What Is Footfall Technology and How Does it Help Retailers?

August 27, 2020 by Ally Azzarelli – Footfall systems—also known as people counting, shopper counting or foot traffic monitoring—allows physical stores, arenas, casinos, and airports to count or track the number of shoppers, attendees or visitors that enter.

There are different wired and wireless ways to count people such as thermal sensors, video cameras – these vary from basic security cameras, WiFi analytics or sensors, Bluetooth beacons, and break-beam or motion sensors. Footfall technology plays an important role in retail tech by providing insights like data analytics, queue management and space utilization.

How Does People Counting Software Help Retailers?

1. Optimize and Improve Staffing Allocation
   By gaining a better understanding of in-store traffic, retailers can better allocate staff throughout their stores. This can range from what time certain stores are busiest to which areas of larger stores need more assistance. Creating a more efficient associate to customer balance enhances the shopping experience as well as improves employee engagement.
   
   
2. Limit Occupancy or Enforce Social Distancing
   Crowd controlling technology provides an accurate real-time headcount of how many people are occupying space in your stores at a given time. Though some retailers like Kroger jumped on board a decade ago, social distancing and store-level capacity mandates due to the pandemic have increased the demand for this technology. Former New York Yankees slugger Alex Rodriguez made headlines in late July for helping invest $51 million into a people-counting start-up tech company.
   
   
3. Maximize Your In-Store Marketing
   Footfall data allows retailers to quantify and measure their marketing strategies making it even easier to understand and follow trends such as the frequency of new or returning customers. These insights can help answer questions to help tailor future promotions. Are marketing campaigns reaching the true target audience – are these shoppers showing up? Should marketing budgets be adjusted?
   
   
4. Analyze Customer Behavior
   People counting methods also help retailers differentiate themselves from the competition. Behavior analysis can indicate how much time customers spend in each store, popular foot routes they take throughout the store or possible missed opportunities due to wait times or lines. Understanding customer behavior can assist with product placement, staff allocation, marketing, and sales conversion, just to name a few.

Integrating Footfall Technology With Store Intelligence

Combining the power of a store intelligence solution along with footfall technology gives you the benefit of an abundance of data and insights into every store. Store intelligence or store profiling data acts as your single source of truth, adding the ability to gather critical footfall information delivers genuine ROI, helping retailers like you:

• Create even more relevant and robust reporting
• Discover when and where to enhance your marketing efforts
• Pinpoint busier locations to accurately aid in future store expansions

Looking to empower your team with seamless, cloud-based access to your data? Contact us to set up a demo or ask us about a free 90-day trial.