Is Improving In-Store Conversion Better Value for Money Than Advertising?

3 min read
Oct 5, 2018

Is Improving In-Store Conversion Better Value for Money Than Advertising

Positive in-store customer experience is at the heart of any brick-and-mortar business. In an exceptionally competitive high street climate, it’s easy to get swept up in pricey advertising campaigns to try and outshine your neighbours and draw customers in.

However, ROI for promotional efforts can often be ambiguous and difficult to measure, potentially turning into a costly exercise that yields very few conversions. Ultimately, real data and intelligible facts about your footfall and consumer habits paint a more accurate and actionable picture.

How does people counting technology help stores increase profits?

In any business, there can sometimes be contention between marketing and technology infrastructure when it comes to budget allocation, but people counting technology and advertising are implicitly related, and should work hand-in-hand to increase your store’s profits.

We’ve listed a few examples of the many ways that people counting technology can directly impact your sales margins:
  • Decrease costs – by gathering data on customer traffic – and more importantly, what happens to customers once they are inside your store – you will have a clearer depiction of what is fact and fiction when it comes to where your advertising and labour costs are being appropriated. You will be able to see where opportunities may have fallen through the cracks, either through an unattended shop floor, a messy display or simply catering to an unrealistic expectation of traffic. Sometimes, the best guide for moving forward is to have adequate hindsight. 
  • Performance optimisation – once you have a true grasp of the situation, you can optimise the performance of your customer service staff in real time. Inevitably, this will also feedback to your marketing department, enhancing their advertising endeavours. 
  • Everyone is a customer – according to a study by Deloitte, non-buying visitors are a significant opportunity loss to businesses. Retailers are missing out on converting these potential leads through lack of understanding, fundamentally running the risk of losing the customer to competitors – permanently. 

Set goals and measure results

Converting visitors into happy, paying customers who are more likely not only to return but also recommend your brand, is undoubtedly your business’ mission.

People counting technology can revolutionise how you set goals and measure results, enabling you to track whether your business is meeting its targets and holding stakeholders accountable and motivated to seek out the best plans of action. This translates not only to your marketing and customer service teams but also:
  • how you plan your store layout;
  • how, when and where you position your products;
  • your maintenance and cleaning schedules; and
  • every other task associated with the day to day running of your enterprise.
Irisys technology can help you to get an accurate measure of footfall in and out of the store. It will provide you with:
  • the tools to qualify the value of your sales in a specific time period;
  • the opportunity to pinpoint which of your marketing campaigns are having a positive effect on conversion;
  • the ability to set realistic targets for each store in the business, enabling you to case study your most profitable establishments and template their methodology.
Finally, people counting technology will enhance customer service delivery by more accurately allocating your labour hours and matching your service promise.

How to get the most from your people counter

Once our sophisticated and unobtrusive sensors have been installed in your building, the high-performance algorithms will allow you to capture traffic data accurately.

Access to this game-changing tool will enable you to see how customers interact with your displays, facilitating accurate adjustments to the layout of your store as soon as a new promotional campaign is running.

Are customers engaging with your sales staff and how long are they spending on specific areas of the shop floor? Would your customers benefit from the addition of helpful amenities? Do your customers prefer to be greeted at the door or are they more approachable after having a browse of your stock? How are customers navigating your store – could you declutter your floor space? These are all things that your people counter will be able to systematically capture, rather than the often subjective feedback from shop floor sales staff.

Making smart business decisions and setting realistic targets helps to reduce ineffectual advertising while gaining invaluable insight into your customers – people counters can be your biggest ally when it comes to this.

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