Measuring customer engagement in retail stores is common practice. Many stores monitor foot traffic and use visitor counts to help determine store performance. While this information can be helpful, it doesn’t tell the whole story.
Foot Traffic Data Can be Manipulated
A recent article on RetailWire delves into the specifics of why foot traffic data isn’t enough, and helps illustrate why it is important to collect data that is qualifiable. For instance:
What’s important about traffic — especially for stores — is not the raw number, but the conversion rate, or basically dividing the number of transactions by the number of visitors. But companies face complications with the metric as store managers with bonuses on the line seek ways to make their conversion rates look better. –RetailWire
Due to varying store locales, conversion rates don’t always work as an apples-to-apples comparison between stores. Shopper styles vary, and certain areas – such as those with young shoppers or high tourism rates, might have a demographic more accustomed to browsing without an intent to buy. Further, conversion rates can be manipulated by moving sensor locations to different areas of the store.
Quality of Data Matters
With the abundance of analytics that are available to us today, not all data is valuable. You can count the number of people entering a store, but if that is the only information you have it doesn’t give you much to work with. The article goes on to state:
One thing traffic does not do, though, is measure the quality of the engagement. Did consumers stay a long time on the site or hang out at the store or did they bounce right back out? Measures of bounce rates and dwell times are sometimes needed to get to “quality of traffic.” –RetailWire
Foot traffic data alone just doesn’t offer the level of insight needed to understand in-store customer behavior and it’s effect on the purchasing decision.
Best Data Practices for Measuring Customer Engagement in Retail Stores
The best data you can collect for retail stores are the ones that tell the full story and the most valuable interaction your customers are having with your products is in the fitting room. Insight into that process is invaluable because it is the biggest sales conversion area of the store. With our fitting room solution data can be collected on:
- Number of Fitting Room Visits
- Number of Calls for Entry
- Length of Occupancy
- Calls for Service
- Time Waiting for Associate to Answer Service Calls
- Number of Calls Unanswered
This not only gives you valuable data for measuring store performance, but it also equips store associates and managers with the tools they need to ensure each customer is being serviced on their timing. Contact us to get started!
