There are many ways to estimate the throughput of people through retail premises, ranging from the traditional method of a person with a clipboard and a “clicker”, through to the latest, most sophisticated systems such as the Dilax OptoCount system using camera-based technology enabling automatic counting of people passing through any space that the camera can be focused on.
But the key question remains: How to use the data after gathering it? Many businesses find that they have invested in a system to gather footfall data only to find that there is a big and potentially expensive gap between having the data and being able to utilise it in a way that provides meaningful results to improve profit margins.
The calculation of the number of customers entering a designated area becomes very useful when it is matched to data such as the volume of sales in that area. But sales volume is contained in another database and typically requires expensive and time-consuming manual intervention to generate a suitable report of footfall versus sales. The answer to this dilemma is a programme that automatically “matches” the revenue or other database contained in the retailer’s existing IT systems with the data from the customer counting system.
Using OptoCount camera technology, any designated area in the store or mall can be individually monitored for footfall during all opening hours. For instance, each aisle could be monitored. Thus the number of people passing along the fruit and vegetable aisle could be automatically “matched” with data showing how many apples, pears and bananas were sold. A more detailed picture of customer buying behaviour would emerge compared to anything available previously.
Dilax Intelcom has been providing this type of sophisticated “matching” software as part of its people counting solution for many years. They have a team of software developers skilled in matching their customers’ databases to the people counting database automatically. Once the system is set up, it can continuously and automatically generate reports as described above. The retailer can easily generate an almost limitless range of reports combining their data with footfall data and thus make people-counting count towards increased profits for their business via a more sophisticated analysis of customer buying behaviour.
Dilax Intelcom will be demonstrating their system at the Retail Solutions Show on Stand E27 from June 24th to 26th and can provide expert opinion on making the most of customer counting data in your business.
DILAX Systems Limited
Tel: 0207 223 8822
Email: sales.uk@dilax.com
www.dilax.com
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