How traffic counting technology can help retailers

We also keep our ears to the ground for some of the industry’s most frequent talking points. For example, there is a definite sense of optimism for bricks and mortar stores. Yes, the e-commerce giants are thriving, but across the board, retailers are vocal about the future of physical shopping experiences.

The narrative is all about enhancing the instore customer experience. But how can you know what changes to implement, if you are unsure of your current shopper behavior?

It is this one word – ‘how’ – which has cropped up again and again when speaking to global retailers.

How do we implement this technology? How do we introduce it to our workforce? How does it work?

Traffic counting can be as simple or as comprehensive as you need it to be. At one end of the scale, reporting on shopper numbers is a valuable way to identify busy periods, store success and dwell time. For more sophisticated analysis, sensors can be placed upon any entrance, any aisle, any location instore to comprehensively understand customer behavior, purchasing decisions and shopper trends in intricate detail.

Whatever iteration of technology retailers opt for, this frequency of ‘how’ questions suggests to us that it’s not a case of qualifying the need for this kind of data, it’s about clarifying the implementation, the logistics of installation and the capacity to interpret the results. The ‘how’, not the ‘when’ or ‘if’.

Such data is not new – after all we’ve been tracking traffic for over 30 years – but with an increasing ability to shop online competing with the traditional instore experience, the impact of harnessing traffic counting data has never been more important.

To find out more about Ipsos Retail Performance and how to better harness traffic counting data, contact us below.