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October 28, 2025
Stop Blaming Traffic: Retail’s Real Problem Is Conversion
Every quarter, we see the same storyline. A retailer reports weak results, gets pressed by analysts, and out comes the familiar explanation: “soft store traffic.” It has become one of retail’s most convenient crutches.
Here’s the truth from where I sit after more than 20 years working directly with store operators, field leaders, and retail executives: Traffic isn’t the real problem. Conversion is. A retailer’s traffic may be down 5%, but if 30% of the shoppers who did show up walked out without buying, traffic isn’t the issue — selling is.
Blaming traffic is easy because it externalizes responsibility. It’s the economy. It’s the weather. It’s gas prices. It’s “shopper hesitancy.” When you blame traffic, you don’t have to fix anything inside the four walls. But that doesn’t change the quiet reality: The sales you’re missing are already in your stores — you’re just not converting them.
The False ‘Experience vs. Conversion’ Debate
I keep hearing that retailers shouldn’t be so “transactional,” that stores should focus on storytelling, community, or brand love before worrying about the register. I don’t buy that. Retail isn’t an art exhibit. The purpose of the store is to create an experience that leads to a sale. Great experiences matter — deeply — but they matter because they make buying easier and more natural.
The idea that retailers must choose between rich experience and strong conversion is a false choice. The best retailers know the truth: This is not experience or conversion… it’s experience for conversion.
Meanwhile, the Cash Register Is Quiet
Retailers spend aggressively to drive traffic — digital ads, influencers, loyalty offers, promotions, events. But once a shopper crosses the lease line, measurement and discipline often disappear. I’ve walked into countless store environments where managers see only sales results, never the traffic that produced them.
You can’t manage what you refuse to measure. And because most retailers don’t consistently measure or manage conversion, they end up chasing more and more traffic while losing the shoppers they already have. A one-point lift in conversion will outperform most traffic-driving tactics — and at a fraction of the cost.
Why Conversion Gets Ignored
From my experience, it comes down to culture and visibility. If store teams don’t see traffic and conversion, they can’t manage it. If leadership doesn’t talk about conversion, stores assume it doesn’t matter. And if we keep romanticizing “experience” without connecting it to selling, we send the message that a beautifully executed store visit — one that ends in no sale — is somehow acceptable. It’s not. Not for the shopper, not for the store team, and certainly not for the retailer’s P&L.
A More Balanced Path Forward
The fix isn’t mysterious. Deliver experiences that remove friction and make buying easier. Equip and coach associates, because conversion is a human behavior, not a theoretical KPI. And give store teams visibility into traffic and conversion so they can finally manage the gap between visits and sales. When retailers do these things together, shoppers buy. When they don’t, shoppers browse, leave, and get counted as “traffic problems” the next quarter.
Mark Ryski (mark.ryski@headcount.com) is founder and CEO of HeadCount Corp, and author of the new Amazon Top Selling retail category book, “Store Traffic is a Gift”
Discussion Questions
Are retailers leaning on ‘traffic’ as a convenient excuse instead of confronting their conversion gap?
Has the industry gone too far in romanticizing ‘experience’ at the expense of selling?
What will it take for retailers to hold store teams and leadership accountable for conversion in the same way they are accountable for sales?
Poll
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Kevin Graff
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First, Mark’s book is fantastic – really insightful and highly beneficial for all retailers! It’s also right on the money. Store traffic does fluctuate, but the truth is that huge numbers of people still go out to shop, and there’s no real shortage of traffic for retailers compelling enough to attract it. What’s highly wasteful, however, is squandering that traffic by not converting it. And on this front, too many retailers fall down on basic execution. Not nearly enough attention gets paid by some retailers to things like merchandising, how customers use stores, service levels and so forth.
So “people aren’t coming in” is the excuse being offered? Barring some exogenous factor – the weather (of course!) – that sounds more like an admission you’re not offering up much of a shopping experience. Of course this is really a math issue: Sales = Conversion rate x traffic, and with online shopping having diminished the second number, the first has to (rise to) make up for it. But easier said than done, I imagine: conversion is never going to be 100%, …how much of an increase we can reasonably hope to create, I don’t know.
Good points, Craig. Just a small addition:
Sales = Traffic x Conversion Rate % x Average Sale.
You are absolutely correct. If Traffic drops, the only way to maintain and grow sales is to drive up Conversion Rate and/or Average Sale. Each is within the control of the 4-walls of the store.
Thanks Kevin,
You’re right, of course…it’s Sales$ not Sales# that matter (in essence the same reason I’m always wary of studies/surveys that make much of the “do you ever?” category numbers)
I always say that if I opened a store, the first thing I would invest in is a traffic counting system. That’s the starting point of all sales, but not the ending point. Conversion rates, and increasing average basket, are the solution for most every traffic problem / excuse.
I’ve yet to see a store that has maximized the potential from the traffic visiting their stores. That’s not saying some aren’t doing a great job. But the hard facts are that retailers leave thousands of dollars on the floor every day through poor execution of merchandising, staff service levels, sales ability, in-store marketing and more.
I’ve always argued that if retailers put as much effort and resources into ‘upskilling’ their stores as they do with the never-ending I.T. projects they would blow away their sales projections.
Optimizing the store staff count is very important. Post covid our expectation from staff have been reverse proportionate to KPI overloaded which is inhumane.
I’d add traffic mapping. A heat seeker process. Quantify what shoppers are looking at, picking up, trying on, asking questions about… quicker & more thorough than ‘what merch is left at end of quarter’.
Second, hire staff who are marketers or marketing students. If not, be willing & able to teach. The end goal is not a perfectly stacked table of stuff, so why keep hiring shirt folders who aren’t taught purpose & process.
An industry leader I used to work for had a mantra for everyone during soft or negative economic activity – “we understand there is a slowdown/recession, and we choose not to participate”.
Mark speaks truth around excuses retailers adopt when foot traffic is soft. Excuses give teams permission to avoid taking greater ownership. For customers still coming in, better make sure merchandising looks compelling, deals can be found, price points resonate, stores are clean, and all barriers for making a purchase are removed. Pull levers on what you can do as a store team now, leaving the foot traffic analysis to others. Those who do this realize healthier top line sales and bottom line savings even during challenging economic times.
It’s become too convenient for retailers to blame declining foot traffic for poor performance when the deeper issue often lies in converting that traffic into actual sales. As Mark Ryski—author of this article and a recent guest on my podcast The Digital Front Door—emphasized, conversion is one of the most controllable yet least understood metrics in physical retail. Too many retailers still lack visibility into how many shoppers walk in, how many buy, and why.
Over the past few years, the industry has arguably over-romanticized “experience” at the expense of sales execution. Creating engaging spaces is important, but it’s meaningless if those experiences don’t drive transactions. Retailers need to rebalance, equipping store teams with clear conversion metrics, training that prioritizes engagement and selling fundamentals, and accountability structures that link conversion directly to performance reviews and incentives.
In short: traffic tells you opportunity, but conversion tells you performance. The retailers that thrive will be those that treat conversion as a core operating discipline—not an afterthought—and empower their store leaders to manage it with the same rigor as sales, margin, or labor productivity.
Let me offer an alternative viewpoint. Perhaps there is plenty of “traffic” in terms of raw numbers. Good profits, though, require traffic prepared to purchase — prepared to convert. This is not a trivial problem. My company’s advertising work focused on preparing people to be ready to buy once they entered the door. Doing this also increased traffic — it did both. Few retailers, though, advertise enough or in the ways needed to prepare customers to purchase. Advertising agencies contribute to the problem as their skills are with brands so they are unskilled with products motivating purchase. The blog post linked below discusses work my agency did for Lowe’s and their Kobalt brand Double Drive. These products flew off the shelves at incredible rates — because customers were prepared before coming in the door. This approach also led customers to purchase more on those visits where they bought the products we promoted. This isn’t the “one solution” to fit all situations — but I see far too little use of savvy advertising to prepare customers before they reach the store. https://www.douggarnett.com/advertising/business-as-usual-advertising-wont-drive-product-innovation-success/
Retailers often cite declining foot traffic in their reporting to explain underperformance. Instead, they could use traffic insights to inform and optimize their strategies (assortment, pricing, promotion) and store systems (scheduling, merchandising, store design) to increase the percentage of guests who walk out with a purchase.
[Great article, Mark. You should write 3 books on this topic.]
From my casual observation, traffic levels generally seem to still be down from pre-COVID levels, and let’s be honest, they were already trending down for the prior decade. Retailers and shopping center owners should continue to find ways to drive traffic into stores and centers. At the same time, conversion is the real key to retail store success! Providing tools, training, and support focused on conversion makes sense. Additionally, retailers need to find a way of measuring and rewarding conversion, wherever it occurs – in-store, mobile, website, social, etc. As always, measurement and reward will have as much impact as any other tactic.
Analyzing and addressing conversion issues can lead to significant improvements in a retailer’s bottom line.
By focusing on optimizing the customer journey and enhancing the shopping experience, retailers can convert more traffic into sales. This proactive approach not only increases revenue but also builds customer loyalty and satisfaction.
While creating an engaging shopping experience is crucial, it should not overshadow the primary goal of driving sales. Retailers must strike a balance between offering memorable experiences and ensuring that their strategies effectively lead to conversions.
Overemphasizing the experience can sometimes lead to neglecting the fundamentals of the sales process, potentially resulting in missed revenue opportunities.
Retailers can implement key performance indicators (KPIs) specifically focused on conversion rates, ensuring that each team member understands their role in driving these metrics.
Regular training sessions and workshops can equip staff with the necessary skills to enhance customer interactions and close sales effectively. Additionally, incorporating conversion-focused goals into performance reviews and incentive programs can motivate teams to prioritize and improve conversion outcomes.
I love the point about how “a one-point lift in conversion will outperform most traffic-driving tactics — and at a fraction of the cost.” That’s the beauty in talking about conversion. You’re talking about people who are already in the store. Now, what are the variables? Product, price, presentation/storytelling, sales personnel, sales process, fitting room experience for apparel. That’s a lot of moving parts, a lot of different buttons to push to try and figure out how to move the needle on conversion. I’m going to come back to presentation and storytelling as the biggest potential needle mover. The same 100 skus can have a whole different range of presentation levels. The presentation level that best reflects how customers can visualize themselves is going to get the best conversion rate, the biggest basket size. And a skilled salesperson gets a quick second place in boosting the conversion rate in a customer who has been pulled in by the presentation and storytelling.
Mark said it. It’s experience for conversion, not distraction. I keep saying:
Explore + Experiment + Execution = Experience³
Customers want to Explore + Experiment…with product! Retailers must Execute to that Expectation. That’s the Experience for conversion.
Mark, this analysis is precisely what retail leadership needs to hear. You’ve hit the nail on the head regarding the convenient cultural crutch of blaming traffic instead of accepting responsibility for conversion.
The sales being missed are already inside the four walls, and that’s an issue of internal discipline and focus.
The False Choice and The Human FactorYour concept of “experience for conversion” is brilliant and clarifies the false debate retailers keep having. A beautiful store that doesn’t sell is a museum, not a business. The experience’s sole function is to reduce friction and accelerate the sale.
However, we need to connect the conversion failure directly to the pressure placed on the front-line staff:
The simple truth is: You can only maximize the conversion of the traffic you have by fully investing in the people you pay to serve them. Until leadership acknowledges that staff cuts are directly proportional to conversion failure, the cycle of blaming “soft traffic” will continue.