e-strategies Counting Customers
App offers “real-time” traffic data. Beth Mattson-Teig
C
ustomer traffic is the lifeblood of any retail business. Now it is even easier to track how many, when and where those potential customers are concentrating within stores and shopping centers. Chicago-based ShopperTrak launched its first mobile application in January that allows retailers to access foot-traffic data from their iPhone or iPad. Although the app is an added service for existing ShopperTrak customers, the application
even converting one shopper into a buyer can have significant results for them on the bottom line.” Since it launched in January, more than 250 customers
and another 250 non-customers have downloaded the app. An updated version was to include the addition of a new report geared specifically to mall customers, and make the app available in other languages including Mandarin Chinese, French, German, Japanese and Portuguese. ShopperTrak developed the new mobile app to offer its customers real-time access to their data, including three of ShopperTrak’s most popular reports—Key Metrics, Hourly Performance and ShopperTrak Power Hours (peak selling times). Although the app is free, clients who subscribe to the ShopperTrak Managed Service solution typically pay a monthly fee that starts at about $50 to $60 for the monitoring and data reporting services.
also provides a free sample of “The Traffic Report”—a weekly foot-traffic report for even non-ShopperTrak customers. The Traffic Report highlights customer traffic trends in one of 10 top U.S. cities each week. Founded in 1996, ShopperTrak provides retail intelligence
specific to counting and benchmarking foot-traffic at retail stores and shopping centers. The firm currently has more than 500 retail customers and monitors over 40,000 retail stores and mall locations around the world. “We are providing retailers with an important piece of information, which is how many people actually came into the store as opposed to just looking at their transaction log or point-of-sale system,” says ShopperTrak Chief Marketing Officer Ed Marcheselli. “This has been extremely powerful for specialty retailers, because
Counting customer traffic ShopperTrak’s sensor devices operate on proprietary video technology that captures anonymous data on the volume of individual shoppers that enter a retail store or zone. The technology is also able to detect the path or direction those shoppers are moving in. The company provides a variety of reporting solutions to help customers analyze the data and apply the results to a range of business operations. ShopperTrak customers can log in to their
customer portal from a computer—and now the mobile app— and view those metrics through a variety of different reports. Retailers can use the data to track people coming into a store or passing within a particular zone for a retail cart or kiosk. Retailers can then compare that data to their own point-of-sale data to determine how many of those potential customers are actually making purchases. Some retailers use that traffic count data to find the best
locations within a shopping center to locate or relocate a store or kiosk. One of the big advantages is helping retailers coordinate staff schedules in conjunction with peak customer traffic. “Our customers also use this data to establish opening and closing times, and to determine whether they are getting a return on
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Specialty Retail Report n Winter 2013
SpecialtyRetail.com
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