Traffic is still one of the most important measures retailers should be tracking – and despite the fact that electronic traffic counting has been around retailing for many decades, I estimate that some 40 percent+ of retailers still don’t even measure it. Without traffic count data there is no way to measure conversion rates, and if you can’t measure conversion rates you most certainly can’t improve them.

As someone who has spent almost two decades studying store traffic and conversion trends (and authored two books on the topic), I can categorically say that today retailers still generally lack focus or sophistication in the use and application of store traffic and conversion insights. As Nikki points out, there are plenty of other metrics that are useful to track, and even basic traffic and conversion insights have become more nuanced as service elements like BOPIS have become a factor, but the entire area of improving in-store conversion rates is still a largely untapped opportunity for most retailers.

Traffic is an important part of the customer purchase path. As “one” measure of marketing and brand success, driving feet and eyeballs is the first step along the way. Conversion then starts to illustrate other steps: is the product right, presentation attractive, price compelling, etc.? If you just measure “sales” you’re losing visibility into all the potential sales missed by failing to turn a looker into a buyer.

It’s really a yes, and yes gauging foot traffic to a store is important and it is only one tool. Traffic without conversion is worthless whether it’s in the store or to a webpage. Ultimately all that matters is, did the store make a sale that day? When looking for the “why not?“ one has to look at what the employees are trained to do with the traffic. Unless and until retailers notice every nanosecond in their brick-and-mortar locations and craft an exceptional experience, oftentimes these become vanity metrics — a distraction from the training brands should be devoting to their most important asset: their employees.

Nikki is right that traffic is a flawed measure – but every retailer should be trying to maximize conversion while keeping traffic levels stable (at least), if not growing. Conversion is the magic number, regardless of whether you are a tourist store or main line. But comparing one store to another may not be legit. This is why humans get involved in the data.

E-commerce sites measure both traffic and conversion rates scrupulously, and brick-and-mortar retailers should do the same. Simply observing that “the store looks busy” is not enough to understand why some visitors are “just looking” and others turn into customers. More data-based traffic measurement should be part of an overall strategy to build conversion rates and transaction sizes.

Like anything, traffic is a flawed measure if it is not understood and analyzed properly. And gaining that understanding is more challenging today because of the way we shop. For example, someone who visits a store and then buys online from the same retailer would be counted as an unconverted visitor to the store. However, the store arguably played a role in driving the sale.

You can have robust traffic numbers but if it’s not converting into a ringing register, then the alarms need to go off regarding product content and staffing. And if the product is not right, the best (and most abundant) staffing in the world won’t solve the sales problem. And I would think comparisons between stores could be very valuable. Yes, there can be neighborhood differences in customer profiles, but I’m guessing that stores can be clustered into “like” comparisons so that content can be fine tuned and staffing and sales training best practices can be shared.

Traffic is but one metric for retail. They must also look at purchase incidence, number of transactions and purchase amount. These four core metrics can help a business understand their levers for growth and where they should focus energy. Only focusing on traffic misses the mark.

Store traffic is one component of a list of relevant measurements of engagement. It is important, but does not stand alone and, using it standalone is a mistake because it is not completely accurate and does not speak to conversion of foot traffic to sales. Other important measurements are conversion rate, size of market basket by season, day of week, time of day, merchandise returns vs. size of original transaction and more.

The complexities of the modern shopping experiences require a new approach to tracking foot traffic. When we were dealing with the brick-and-mortar dominated retail scene of 20 years ago, there were clear-cut paths to tracking foot traffic, store volume, conversion rates, AOV, UPT, AUP etc.

However, in our mobile-dominated and forever-connected lives, the old foot traffic and retail KPIs are not so linear. Traffic is still a meaningful measure to track, yet your potential customer may be engaging with your brand in so many formats, channels and social media channels, so the path to purchase is very complex. There are methods of tracking the customer journey between online and offline experiences. As long as the customer opts in, retailers have a perspective on what the customer has browsed, whats in their wish list, what they have bought online or in the store or even via the BOPIS method.

This requires a significant investment in tracking tools and business intelligence solutions that can capture, understand, contextualize, then operationalize your retail strategies around this complexity.

No metric is inherently flawed, how people use the metric is. Isolated metrics usually always fall apart when scrutinized, but combined metrics with analysis always provides insights and accurate predictions. And isn’t all this measurement stuff about making better decisions anyway? The real challenge is that traffic is usually not the starting point for a sale, yet many retailers measure only that — in online funnels and store engagement. Traffic by itself is a poor measure, but combined with other metrics becomes a powerful tool to identify interest in sales, products, the store and the brand. There is even greater importance depending on situational issues like the transaction frequency of the retailer. For instance, a grocery store with hundreds of shoppers per hour (where almost every group entering the store will purchase something) is very different from boutique luxury stores where the shopper is still very early in their journey to put down large sums on a product. Traffic counters in specific locations within the store yield great insights on interest within a department, while… Read more »

Traffic is by no means a perfect measure of the trend in awareness and strength of a brand but it is as good as the other measures we have today. Also, the importance of knowing the traffic flow by time is to manage your staffing to maximize the conversion rate of that traffic. Many retailers today still plan their staff schedules based on sales and history and not the traffic flow resulting in an imperfect schedule. If you are understaffed at certain times of the day you will not optimize sales and this leads to a continued loss of sales. The ability to manage the quality of your staff and get the very best people on the shop floor at the busiest time is crucial to getting the best results out of your stores.

Traffic is one important metric in better understanding the shopping journey. I’ve been designing and conducting in-store shopper journey measurement and analysis for more than 10 years. Understanding the entire journey all the way through to their purchases unveils many invaluable insights. Traffic measurement alone is a hollow number whose value is learning if your traditional advertising and marketing is drawing more people. Focusing on more specifics — a specific category and select products within the category will provide invaluable insights and accountability to specific brands. In the end — whether it’s finding value (an ROI) for in-store technology or measuring the efficacy of in-store digital content and/or experiences — the numbers that speak the loudest in the boardroom are those that answer the question, “did it sell more stuff?”