Retail traffic counting improves staffing and sales

Using retail traffic counting, stores can more efficiently schedule staff and increase sales.

When shoppers aren’t sure what to buy, and don’t get helpful advice from retail staff, 90% of them leave empty-handed, according to a consumer survey by TimeTrade.

It gets worse. If the 90 percent of shoppers had received the help from shop assistants, 86 percent of them would have purchased even more than planned.

The survey found that when consumers aren’t sure of what to buy, and actually get the help they need:

• 93% are more likely to buy
• 90% would shop at the same store the next time
• 84% leave more satisfied
• 86% buy more than they expected

But retailers have limited resources to devote to staffing. To ensure they optimise the number of shop assistants available, managers need to know when are their peak shopping times and busiest footfall. A video retail traffic counter shows hourly, half-hourly or even 5-minute break-down of the number of people entering the store. The counts can be integrated with a workforce management system, making it easy to create better forecasts and staffing schedules.

Identifying key selling periods lets retailers allocate more staff at busy periods, and choose to have their best shop assistants on the floor at these times.

Video retail traffic counters can also send footfall figures to point-of-sale (POS) databases in near real-time. Using this data sales conversion figures are produced every hour or even every 15 minutes. Retailers now have concrete data as to whether their staff scheduling met their sales potential. And take steps to improve when the system highlights inefficiencies.

To find out more about retail traffic counting, and allocating staff to maximise profits, contact sales@retailsensing.com or fill in our contact form.