Counting visitors is one area where online stores win over their brick-and-mortar counterparts. Online stores easily track a consumer’s shopping experience, right from the landing page to the payment. Can you get your hands across a replica of the sophisticated metrics on the web to get visitor analytics or enhance sales in the store? Why not? It all boils down to people counting. The importance of people counting in grocery and retail is undeniable in current times. Ever since the advent of e-commerce stores, it has been forecast that the brick and mortar retail industry will soon be extinct. Standing at the beginning of 2021, there are a great many technological advancements that have lead to an increase in profits and magnified customer satisfaction in physical stores. Retail analytics is now at your fingertip, thanks to people counting solutions.
So lets start with a few benefits and insights you could derive from AI based counters.
Foot Traffic Analysis
People counting solutions offer visitor analytics showing valuable consumer data. If your people counter is installed near the street, you will know how many visitors entered your store and how many of them walked past it. As a store manager, you can interpret this data to get an insight into your store’s performance, identity the development areas and take necessary measures like making the store more attractive to those passing by. Consider that your store stays open from 9 AM to 9 PM and your people counter shows that you do not get many customers before 10 AM, while there is a rush at 9 PM. This is an indication that you need to change your opening and closing hours. The present consumer landscape is quite challenging, given the stronghold of e-commerce retailers. If you had offered shopper incentives through omnichannel marketing, you could measure if your marketing campaign was worth it or not. For instance, you sent coupons to your customers through email and gave them a limited-time offer, say 2 days. What did you notice on the offer days? Was there a rise in the number of people stepping into your store when compared to normal days? Of course, there was, and you could easily compare the total increase in footfall on your people counting solution.
Detect Masks
AI detection sensors in a people counter to allow you to detect if anyone about to enter your store is not wearing a mask. When mask-wearing is mandatory in almost all parts of the world during these trying times, you may want to deploy security personnel at your entrances. But, why take the trouble of hiring resources when you can do with minimum labor cost, simply by installing a people counting solution? With this solution, you can monitor several entrances remotely and get alerts securely in real-time.
Improve Customer Journey
Traffic counting solutions in your store let you gather information about the rate of customer conversion and lost sales opportunities. Data from the connected devices lets you know how many people walked past your store, how many entered, and through checkout data, you get an insight into how many people made a purchase. You can try to find out why certain visitors left after lingering for a while, why some visitors abandoned their carts, and then, take measures on how to stop the recurrences of such incidents in the future. Customers’ most common reasons are poor customer service, long queues for checkout, and below-average product arrangement. Ensure well-staffed floors to guarantee that there are enough attendants during peak season or power hours (the time when maximum visitors arrive) to help customers during their shopping, thereby decreasing chances of lost opportunities. The solution also helps to produce a metric that lets you know how fast a customer was taken care of after he entered the store. One can install additional checkout counters to stop the formation of undesirable queues.
Demographics Breakdown
Know the gender of your visitors through a head counting solution. Finding out the demographic profile of your existing as well as the potential customer base is essential to provide more efficient services. Managers can rev up engagement levels by providing them with the right items and keeping the stocks updated.
Employee Filtering
Any effective counting solution must be capable of filtering out the employee activity whether at the entrance or inside the store to accurately analyze the store’s visitor activity. Most non-AI solutions either simply fail at this or involve expensive and tiresome hardware that needs to be carried around. In the 21st century, a good solution can leverage computer vision and AI to context-driven action insights. That includes filtering out your employee data.
So now that you are thinking about how to find the right counting solution; one that not only offers detailed retail analytics but also operates off your existing infrastructure. We’ve got a solution right here at KayaDev – iCounter, an AI-driven people counting solution meant to ease the managing of brick and mortar stores and increase their profits. All the while not putting a dent in your pocket
