Traffic Counting: Traffic Intelligence And ROI

Calculating and establishing an attractive ROI for traffic intelligence is a challenge many retailers face today. Typically, an organization begins the process by calculating the investment required for the hardware and software on a per site basis and then looks to amortize the capital costs over the short or even the long term. Then, they try to estimate the often difficult to predict costs of the implementation of the unknown strategic initiatives required to deliver a sales increase. Many areas of the business can potentially be involved in the successful execution of a traffic intelligence strategy, such as marketing, real estate, human resources for skills development, merchandising and visual presentation and so many more. It becomes even more difficult to calculate the true costs and delivery time-lines.

This article will discuss how retailers can reverse the process and evaluate and quantify the opportunity for improvement in advance of making the investment. With traffic intelligence, you can predict the performance of the business using the business metric of conversion ratio. The ROI then becomes an exercise in determining exactly what performance standard is required to achieve ROI. The subsequent time line for that ROI then becomes a deployment and compliance issue. This allows an organization to maximize the potential instead of just achieving the minimum standard. By evaluating and quantifying the required conversion ratio, traffic intelligence data transformed into strategic initiatives will mean an organization can target and achieve a much stronger ROI result with the actual time to achieve cost recovery and profitability from the investment entirely within their control.