Understanding People-Counting Technologies

In today's retail world, it is essential to seize every opportunity that gives your company an advantage over the competition. Automatic people-counting technologies are one of the most important tools used by many successful retailers for gathering business metrics. Read on to learn a few of the most valuable reasons to count customer traffic.

The conversion rate of customers who come into the store and buy something as opposed to customers who do not (number of sales divided by total visitor traffic) results in a key statistic. Managers use this statistic to motivate their employees or to change sales techniques and marketing strategies. Traffic counts and conversion rates provide a wealth of information for determining the impact of changes to sales and marketing strategies.

Additionally, directional people counters can be used to predict the number of cashiers or customer service agents required in near real time based on occupancy levels or queue size. Because staff requirements go hand in hand with customer traffic, accurate staffing is the key for optimizing staff level and staff quality. Marketing professionals rely on accurate visitor statistics to measure the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns. The most successful analysis should include answers to two basic questions: 1) How did the campaign affect total customer traffic? and 2) How did the campaign affect the conversion ratio? Without accurate data, it is impossible to answer these questions with any certainty.