Everything you need to know about Foot Traffic Data

Foot Traffic Data to estimate your revenue

People make a successful business. No matter how innovative your product is or how great your services are unless you can reach the right customer at the right time, your products or services do not hold any value. It is important to understand where the right customers are, what are their behavioural patterns and what are their purchasing habits. Foot Traffic data provide businesses with insight into customer activity and how it affects the business.  These insights help you make your services indispensable.

What is Foot Traffic Data?

The term ‘Foot Traffic’ refers to the number of people walking by a particular location. ‘Foot Traffic Data’, on the other hand, is a subset of geospatial data of the number of visitors who pass that particular location at a given time. It also helps estimate how long these visitors stayed in the area, which shops did they enter or exit, and how often do they visit that particular area without using their personal information. 

Some of the attributes of foot traffic data include:

  • Number of visitors at a certain place or area over a set period of time which can give businesses the scope to understand how many customers they can expect at what time of the day.
  • Number of mobile devices located at this location which can be the right opportunity for businesses to alert their customers in the vicinity for an offer or an advertisement.
  • Exact location coordinates or demographic data about the area which are beneficial for businesses to understand what kind of customers they can expect and what other stores are they visiting.

Ways to collect Foot Traffic Data

Data experts, such as Echo Analytics, rely on multiple verified methods to measure Foot Traffic. It can include:

  • Physical counting device – Foot Traffic counters or clicker counters use sensors, such as Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) to register the number of customers entering or existing in a retail shop. RFID uses radio technology to estimate movements. The RFID tag transmits digital data when triggered by an electronic signal which is set off by a movement. This signal helps identify objects, detect their movements, and send the data to nearby readers. 
  • Mobile device tracking – Anonymized mobile device trackers are used to estimate how many visitors are entering or exiting a particular location. Information gathered from the devices provide information about the visitor’s mobility pattern and all kinds of activity that they opted in. Anonymized mobile data keeps customer information safe while offering valuable information about a business’s performance. 
  • Infrared Sensors – The entrances, exits, and key spots at any location such as a mall or a station use unbroken infrared beams to track mobility. These beams create an invisible barrier at the crossing points, and they set off a signal each time some passes that barrier. They are usually installed in doorways and can only monitor movement in the location where they are installed.
  • Thermal Sensors – They can be placed with more flexibility than infrared sensors as they use heat to detect movement. They require little battery power and are low on maintenance. Thermal sensors are popularly known to protect visitors’ identities as individual data cannot be attained through thermal tracking. It can also mean that thermal sensors do not provide demographic information which is a crucial insight for businesses to estimate their customer profile.

Echo Analytics’ Foot Traffic Data helps understand the number of visitors in the store and the number of times people visit the store.

Use Cases Foot Traffic Data

  • Retail

Foot Traffic Data gives you the insight to better understand your customers’ behavior patterns to maximize your profit. A comparison of foot traffic to the number of sales made will help you get insights into your conversion rates, as well as specific trends such as the effect of increased foot traffic on business and how it made the company more profitable. It can also help establish the least successful hours and the peak times to help retailers figure out staffing schedules. For example, the most skilled salesmen will be at the store during peak hours. While street-level establishments depend heavily on foot traffic, upper floors such as law firms or accountants can also benefit from this kind of data. It gives them an understanding of when their customers visit their offices and what are the hours when the maximum work gets done. 

  • Urban Planning

While foot traffic data is beneficial in understanding consumer movement trends, leading to higher sales and revenue numbers, it can also be instrumental in urban planning. Foot traffic data shows areas that have an increased number of pedestrians. This helps urban designers ensure the proper placement of buildings along with other safety and aesthetic factors to protect pedestrians from vehicles or make their walk more enjoyable by installing a park. Planners can also rely on foot traffic data to estimate the density of the population in a particular area based on which they can integrate street trees, crosswalks, extended curbs, and other features into spatial planning. Through foot traffic data you can also estimate whether the area will be popular with shoppers. 

  • Insurance

Leveraging the knowledge of foot traffic data enables insurance companies to smarter risk analysis. Foot traffic data provides the scope for predictive assessment which means an insurance company can evaluate the risk factors of a particular area or building based on the number of people. For example, if the company wants to insure a shop that is located in an accident-prone area, foot traffic data can provide insights into risk factors such as property damage and how many people will be affected by it. It provides a granular perspective on where people are going and how their movement and behavior change according to the location that they are in. This kind of perspective helps insurance companies understand the changing mixes of revenue such as how many people who used to dine in now opt for take-out food. 

  • Real Estate

Foot traffic data analysis is beneficial for real estate value evaluation. It is a quick and reliable method for investors to estimate the commercial value of certain properties, whether it is a residential building or a shopping complex. The advantage of using foot traffic data, in this case, is that it goes beyond property type or tenant data; instead, it provides information on behavioral trends such as frequency or length of visits. Data experts such as Echo Analytics not only offer comparable data for locations of interest but also allow investors to identify the financial potential of an area or a location to avoid any kind of investment risks. 

  • Commercial Rent Pricing

Foot traffic also determines commercial rent pricing in your chosen location of interest. However, it is interesting to know that if your location of interest has higher foot traffic it doesn’t necessarily mean that your business will be profitable. On the contrary, it can command higher rents. Locations that are in the middle of a bustling market – that are usually ideal for any store – can be expensive to operate in, due to the high demand. One way to ensure that you are not spending too much on rent is to set up shop in a less crowded area. But this would mean you would have to understand your customers’ behavior and foot traffic data can help you with that. It can give you a detailed idea about your customer behavior that can determine your product quality and reasonable pricing. 

Innovative businesses who want to stay ahead of the game by predicting customer behavior and managing their resources accordingly, harness the power of foot traffic data to elevate their performance. Whether it is the insurance industry, retailers, or any private equity firms, anyone can benefit from foot traffic data. At Echo Analytics we believe in democratizing data and that everyone should be able to utilize good-quality data to attain maximum results.

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