Wednesday, 06 April 2016 05:23

Retail Business Winning Formula: How to Optimize the Visitor Counter Data

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Today the visitor counting technologies can consolidate large amounts of detailed information, providing reports on the basic business metrics, such as conversion rate, success of marketing campaigns and personnel efficiency. In and of itself such data is not deemed to be static – it is hourly and daily changing. In the same way, as to benefit from customer counting systems, one will have to place efforts into studying of the statistics collected.

In order to optimize the customer counters data one should follow the following rules:

Study the tendencies at different periods of time

Make data analysis and draw conclusions

Be fully engaged into solving of acute problems

Assess the results of the changes made

The tendencies to be studied depend on the specifics of your business, object size and location and key tasks. Let us see, what the basic business analytics metrics that can be obtained using the visitor counting systems, are:

  • Customer dwell time analysis. Using the customer counter data one can easily find out what the “hot” and “cold” periods – foot traffic peak and off-peak hours - for a store are. The company’s management can employ this data, when making personnel schedules or deciding, what the opening hours will be. When the employees work in a proper way, no visitor will be under-serviced, so the conversion rate and customer loyalty will be increased. The customer counters can reveal the true-to-life information on store traffic, while most of the sellers tend to conceal the real data from their management.

The visitor counting systems provide even more in-depth data that can be used for your business efficiency analysis. Company heads can take advantage of customer counters in order to track the audience reaction to different external factors, such as a new store opened nearby or marketing activity of the competitors. In some cases it won’t be inappropriate to analyze the incoming and passing by traffic to estimate the shopper attraction factors.

  • Study the visual marketing efficiency
  • See the advance after you have changed the way the goods are displayed or the show-windows have been dressed in a new manner.
  • Confirm the success of promotions and merchandising activities
  • Analyze the data, taking a few sample stores

Retailers can use the gained information for finding out what the soft spots and ways to solve problems are, as well as for company development and building the more stable relationships with customers. One should learn how to minimize the current marketing costs, allocate personnel efficiently and with peak hours in mind, and to assess the attractiveness of window dressings and goods layouts outside and inside of the store.

Through detailed assessment of the efficiency of introduced changes and thorough investigations, aimed at discovering the positive dynamics, the companies will be able to offer new business challenges, push up sales and enhance the efficiency of operating business. A certain level achieved, the whole process repeats itself again. Genuinely high results are achieved by the companies that strive for hitting their targets, understanding the ingredients for success and using the right instruments to attain it.

Today the visitor counting technologies allow to combine large amount of detailed data, providing reports on key business indicators, such as conversion rate, success of marketing campaigns and personnel efficiency. Such data is not static in and of itself, it changes hourly and daily. It is equally true that in order to enjoy the advantages of customer counting systems one has to work really hard on the analysis of the collected statistics.

We encourage sticking to the following order to optimize data, obtained from visitor counters:

  1. Study tendencies at different periods
  2. Analyze data and make conclusions
  3. Work actively to solve the acute problems
  4. Estimate the results of the introduced changes

The tendencies to be studied depend of particular characteristics of your business, object size and location, and key tasks. We would like to share the basic business analytics metrics that can be obtained, using the customer counting systems.

  • Customer dwell time analysis. Using the customer counter data one can easily find out what the “hot” and “cold” periods – foot traffic peak and off-peak hours - for a store are. The company’s management can employ this data, when making personnel schedules or deciding, what the opening hours will be. When the employees work in a proper way, no visitor will be under-serviced, so the conversion rate and customer loyalty will be increased. The customer counters can reveal the true-to-life information on store traffic, while most of the sellers tend to conceal the real data from their management.

The visitor counting systems provide even more in-depth data that can be used for your business efficiency analysis. Company heads can take advantage of customer counters in order to track the audience reaction to different external factors, such as a new store opened nearby or marketing activity of the competitors. In some cases it won’t be inappropriate to analyze the incoming and passing by traffic to estimate the shopper attraction factors.

  • Study the visual marketing efficiency
  • See the advance after you have changed the way the goods are displayed or the show-windows have been dressed in a new manner.
  • Confirm the success of promotions and merchandising activities
  • Analyze the data, taking a few sample stores

Retailers can use the gained information for finding out what the soft spots and ways to solve problems are, as well as for company development and building the more stable relationships with customers. One should learn how to minimize the current marketing costs, allocate personnel efficiently and with peak hours in mind, and to assess the attractiveness of window dressings and goods layouts outside and inside of the store.

Through detailed assessment of the efficiency of introduced changes and thorough investigations, aimed at discovering the positive dynamics, the companies will be able to offer new business challenges, push up sales and enhance the efficiency of operating business. A certain level achieved, the whole process repeats itself again. Genuinely high results are achieved by the companies that strive for hitting their targets, understanding the ingredients for success and using the right instruments to attain it.

Kirill

Project manager