Retail stores and supermarkets have been using people - counting technology for decades to improve and optimize their store’s financial performance, long before data analysis was deemed to be an essential business tool. Typically, people - counters were installed at the entrances of shops to automatically count the amount of people that enter and exit the shop. But, these days, because of the complexity of businesses operating within the premises of another business,  each business within the complex is not always defined by having its own clear entrance and exit. 

EFMP Dutch partner, PSfm Field Marketing, experienced just this dilemma when looking to set up a people –counting operation for a shop-in-shop. To overcome this issue they worked in close collaboration with Senmo and  implemented the installation of a people - counting camera, with whom they set up a reciprocal data sharing agreement. The store gave them the tally of customers entering the main store which allowed  them to fully quantify their data. Principles of anonymity were observed in the exchange of data and the data exchange process was fully compliant with the GDPR regulations.

People - counters can be a highly – effective mechanism, giving website -like metrics for in-store shopping patterns. Information that can be obtained from this procedure includes the following:

• Dwell Time
Dwell time measures the number of people who enter a shop or business in a particular period of time.

• The window conversion rate.
This is the percentage of shoppers who enter a store compared to the number of people who walk passed it.

• Visit duration.
Visit duration is the amount of time visitors stay in a shop.

• Conversation rate.
The Conversation rate is the percentage of total visitors versus the number that make purchases. 

The above mentioned metrics, while valuable on their own, can also be combined with a NPS score. A NPS score  is a widely used market research metric that typically takes the form of a single survey question, asking respondents to rate the likelihood that they would recommend a company, product, or  service, to a friend or colleague, on a scale ranging from highly unlikely to highly likely. 

Much like website data online, the people - counting data gives PSfm, and the retailer huge insights  into the shopping patterns of consumers in-store, allowing for them to make informed business decisions on how to fully optimise the in-store consumer experience. 

The people - counters have been operational at the shop-in-shop for over a month now, and the results obtained have been hugely instrumental in contributing to the conversion rate in-store. 

This is a mechanism that PSfm believes will only become more important for shop-in-shop locations and brings in-store retail analysis in line with that available for online shopping channels. This campaign has also managed to garner a lot of attention from other large retailers who, for this reason, have shown an interest in people - counters and would like to try them out. To learn more about how you can improve your in-store sales with people counters, get in touch with PSfm.