Offline retail analytics
Customer footfall
While analytics were mostly thought to be used only by online retailers, that isn't the case anymore. Offline retailers can now utilise customer analytics to gain insight into their customers. With this data, they can make informed decisions about marketing strategies, store layouts, product offerings, and more. By understanding the behaviour of their customers, retailers can make smarter decisions about how to serve them best and increase sales.
That said, what do offline retailers want to see? Let's talk about that:
1. Demand to staff
To ensure customers are provided with the best service, stores must have adequate staffing levels. In the past, when retail analytics was not as advanced, stores would use various techniques to determine the number of staff needed for each shift. This could include following a pre-established plan, taking cues from management or head offices, or simply making a guess.
Fortunately, using data to track customer numbers, behaviours, and peak times can help businesses adjust staffing levels to ensure they are optimally staffed during the busiest times. By using customer analytics, businesses can collect data to determine which days and hours of the week are the most popular. With this information, they can make sure there are enough staff members on-site during those times.
The total value of UK retail sales in 2022 stood at £441bn
Source: Retail Economics, ONS. Find out more here.
2. Performance
One reason companies gather information from one's operations is to motivate staff. Many people working in retail want to be successful, offer good customer service, and stand out from their colleagues for promotions, awards, and even financial benefits. However, due to a lack of data, there can often be a feeling that such rewards can be randomly selected or even suffer due to favouritism.
As such, replacing decisions based on intuition and feelings with factual evidence through analytics can benefit a business. This makes it easier for staff to understand why certain choices are being made and why certain decisions are rewarded. This can be used as a way to motivate staff and recognise those who are showing the most success, as well as identify areas where training and improvement may be needed.
3. Real time data
With an excellent retail analytics package, retailers can access real-time information about their stores, allowing them to make fast decisions. Throughout the day, progress can be tracked, and necessary adjustments can be made in response. For example, staff can be reassigned to different tasks, or additional tasks can be brought in if the number of customers unexpectedly rises.
In addition, multi-site companies can take advantage of the data available to them to create the clearest understanding of all of their stores. Software applications enable them to access information in real time as well as over a variety of timeframes, such as a week, month, season, or year. The data can be used to identify trends between stores and apply successful strategies to other locations.
Conclusion
All in all, retail analytics is a powerful tool that can help retailers improve their operations and increase profits. By making use of real-time data, retailers can identify trends and make decisions quickly, as well as track progress throughout the day. It is also an invaluable resource for multi-site companies, allowing them to understand the performance of each store and apply successful strategies to other locations. Really, retail analytics can help retailers make the most of their resources and maximise their potential, so if you're running your offline business just based on gut feeling, make the change today and get started with analytics!
StoreTech offers in-store footfall analytics solutions to help clients measure opportunities, optimise performance, and more to help their businesses succeed. If you are looking for customer footfall analytics, check out what we offer.
