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Pedestrian Counters 3/4/2008 11:43:34 AM see topic |
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Pedestrian Counters |
Posted by
Ken at 3/4/2008 11:43:34 AM
Ken Kilar is a skilled programmer and respected executive manager. Ken works with high-end databases, architects, builds and interfaces high availability e-Commerce and Business Information systems. Ken has a proven track record (both vision and development skills) to conceptualize and deliver complex technology solutions.
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1045 views |
Just as you measure traffic and conversion with your online store, the same can be done for your traditional brick and mortar stores. There are just a few players in the pedestrian counter space.
- ShopperTrak [link]
- St Michael Strategies (SMS - formerly know as BMI) [link]
- Traf-Sys People Counting Systems [link]
- Counting Technologies Corporation [link]
ShopperTrak offers the “Orbit” video camera setup and makes claim to distinguish between incoming and outgoing shopper traffic, count side-by-side traffic and differentiate between adults and most small children. Nice, but I don't really know how important all that stuff is. To me it's a bit like the toaster that can also cook you an egg. Great, but I really only need some toast.
When it comes to foot traffic, the only data most people have time to care about is door traffic and conversion. They'll just quickly look at those numbers and compare it to like doors and last year's numbers. Every counter solution will tell you traffic by hour, so figuring out your prime and weak selling hours is easy.
What is important is that even if it's not 100% perfect, as long as you're calibrating to yourself it doesn't matter all that much. What retailers look for are changes in traffic patterns and dips & surges in conversion.
ShopperTrak is the more expensive solution (setup, monthly fee and annual maintenance). The Orbit units requires special installation and not too many people can fix them when the break. However, ShopperTrak offers some cool things like their National and ShopperTrak Retail Traffic Index data, which benchmarks and projects retail customer traffic trends across different segments. That predictive and historical information could be quite helpful.
Traf-Sys offers the budget conscious Door Mounted Infrared Sensors, as well as an overhead body heat monitoring Thermal Sensors. They also offer a Proximity Sensor, which will tell you how many people are coming into a particular area of your store.
Your traditional infrared style door mounted traffic units count intersections in .5 increments; if you walk in the store it's .5, then when you leave it's another .5. So, .5 + .5 = 1 whole person. Some retailers will count it to be slightly less than 1 since deliveries and employees often use the same doors.
If you have the option, for door mounts I would recommend you go with the low-voltage wiring as opposed to the battery option. The enticing battery option is an easier setup, but batteries die and having store associates replace the batteries and try to re-sync them can be nightmarish.
Mount the units at lest 4' high to minimize the stroller and small children counts. Unless you're a candy or balloon store…then maybe you do want to count the kids.
I recently read an interesting post on TechCrunch about UK based company, Path Intellegence. Path Intellegence's FootPath™ solution seems like a clever, promising new way to monitor mall and store pedestrian (foot) traffic. Cell phones periodically ping nearby cell towers with a unique ID — Path Intellegence has developed a monitoring technology to pickup that ping and continuously (and accurately) track the anonymous movements of that shopper throughout a large location.
Path Intellegence is unlike any other tracking device in that it promises to also track flow of traffic (hot spots, bottlenecks, etc,…), which would be extremely valuable information for any store based retailer.
Maybe someday malls will adopt this solution and provide Path Intellegence as a service to their tenants on a subscription basis. Tenants would then not have to install or maintain their own tracking devices and could even get mall traffic to correlate with their individual store traffic data.
Agree? Disagree? Post a comment, or email me - maybe I can add some updates to this topic if I skipped something super important.
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