Trends in Store Foot Traffic
Every business has trends that occur in their customers’ shopping behaviors. Most stores have peak shopper hours when the store just seems to be busier than at other times of the day. Mall stores can vary in their peak shopper hour’s verses retail jewelry businesses in stand alone buildings. With labor being such a huge total costsof operating a retail jewelry store it is imperative that managers track foot traffic to understand trends and respond with proper store staffing.
Some stores use electronic meters to count shoppers passing through the store’s door way. While the total numbers are never completely accurate, they do provide some valuable information that is readily available to managers. Manual systems can also be made effective with a bit of training and constant reinforcement of its importance to employees.
Trends can be identified by recording actual shopper visits per store hour for the previous four weeks and graphing a line of projected activity for the upcoming week. Store managers can begin to see how customers might be changing the hours they frequent the store. Of course an automated system tied to a point of sale system can provide even more insight including the type of sales that are occurring during certain stores hours.
As stores juggle the store hours assigned to sales associates it is important for managers to track sales during peak hours to make sure that average sales per transaction and the type of merchandise being sold is consistent with store sales projections and past store sales history. Understanding when customers are coming into the store and what sort of merchandise they are requesting and what sort of merchandise they are buying actually buying are very good approaches to better understanding how your retail business is performing in this most unusual economy. Even more detailed information that provides performance on a per sales associate basis is most desirable.
What sort of foot traffic trends have you been able to recognize and how have you responded?
Tim Malone commented:
Thanks for responding Sandra. Being able to staff up to meet your
store's changing foot traffic patterns is important as it will
reflect your customers perceptions of your service levels. Since
you are working with tourists consider asking for email addresses
and creating your own database of prospects and customers. You can
then email market to them. Should you decide to do this be sure to
create segments of customer types and proposed product type
purchases. That way you will be able to send "personalized" product
offerings. Just sending generic emails no longer impresses
customers and will result in emails that are opened by recipients.
Consider fashion and product offerings as well as special occasions
and opportunities for these folks to gift jewelry. You need to ask
these sorts of questions to really be an effective email marketer
Sandra Cooke-Locken commented:
Friday nights have become our busiest, and most profitable nights,
so we stay open late on that night now. I'm in an unusual situation
as far as foot traffic, as my jewellery store is located inside of
another store Daily foot traffic through that store is 300-400
people per day in the winter months, and 800-1000 people a day in
the spring/summer months when the tourists to the area start to
come in (we're located near two major lakes in Alberta in close
proximity to Calgary and many people have summer cabins or bring a
holiday trailer to the lakes). Everyone goes past us, as we're
located right on the exit aisle out of the store. Since this is our
first year in business, we'll keep careful watch on the summer foot
traffic, and change as needed.
