Instore Data Analysis: How can it help you boost sales

As a retail store manager or owner, you must know the answers to the following questions:

How many people visit your store every day?

How many potential customers do your store serve each day?

How many of them make an actual purchase?

Which area do they enter first? How long do they linger?

Which store area do they spend more time in?

How long do they spend time in your store?

Do you have enough staff to serve them?

How long are the queues?

How positive is your customer experience?

If you wish to run a successful retail store, you must have all the possible information about your store, products, customer behavior, etc. Information is the key. Use this information to gain knowledge about customer wants, expectations, and needs.

If you wish your retail business to grow in the market where online shopping stores are already capturing a large space and spreading, you have to work on optimizing the standard operating procedures (SOP) of your physical store. This is an effective way of staying competitive, ensuring higher performance, improves customer experience, and boosting customer satisfaction.

In-store data analysis gives the much-needed access to the valuable data of your store. You can analyze, mold, and improve store appearance, staff performance, and the customer experience in a way that will lead to improved sales and better profitability.

The online shopping challenge

Some sectors of the global economy are greatly impacted by the internet revolution and the retail sector is not an exception to it. The retail market is greatly affected by the boost in the online shopping market. People have started switching to online shopping over traditional shopping as it offers them multiple benefits and comfort. Online shopping platforms offer more product data, more variety, easy access to all the products, easy categorization, real-time gratification, etc. All of this can be enjoyed by the customers without having to leave their homes.

The rapid spread of internet use accompanied by the use of smartphones has completely changed the way customers used to buy. This is forcing the retail industry across the globe to get ready for new challenges.

However, there still exists the customer base that prefers to visit the store in person, see and touch the products, and bargain if possible before purchasing them. The majority of the products, both regular and seasonal are still purchased physically, and There lies a scope for retail stores to gain and retain a large customer base.

Optimizing your store performance

Retail data analytics comes to the rescue here also. Advanced analytics solutions for the retail sector provide a range of data analysis options. Retailers can leverage this data for marketing optimization, predictive analysis, decision management, analyzing credit risk, web analytics, fraud analytics, etc.

But, if you wish to focus on improving an in-store customer experience and store performance, you will have to monitor the store physical space through CCTV cameras. Integrating your CCTV system with the right data analysis solution will let you perform different activities like:
Counting the total number rod customers in the store at any given point.
Estimate store occupancy.
Monitoring queues, etc.

Monitor customer flow with people counting

As said above, retailers can use people counting software to get insights into the number of visitors that enter and leave your store, footfall trend and flow of customers. Place a CCTV camera just at the entrance that can gather the required data and send it to the system for analysis. People counting software will help you with:
Counting store visitors with accuracy.
Understand the flow of visitors and traffic patterns.
Modify store and staff planning as per the data.
Find out the best opening hours.
Examining and fathoming the impact of promotional activities, weather, festivals, etc.

If you integrate the people counting software with your POS system, it can give you crucial data on the conversion rates. This will help you in making more informed business decisions.

Find out the average visit time & predict the occupancy of the store

Retail data analytics system with a people counting mechanism lets you get occupancy estimation data which can help you understand how many visitors are present in the store, in a particular department, or section at a given point of time. Using this data you can calculate their average time of visit.

The occupancy estimation system operates in collaboration with ceiling-mounted cameras that are installed just above the entrances and exits of the store. These cameras along with other cameras of the CCTV network installed in-store gather data on the total occupancy of the store.

This system helps you with the following:
Examine the occupancy data.
A total number of people in specific store areas.
Average visit time at the store.
Find out the productive opening hours.
Ensuring security and excellent service.

Retailers can also find innovative ways of improving the use of space to boost revenue opportunities.

Mitigating customer waiting time

Customers hate to wait and stand in long queues. Hence, installing a queue monitoring system is crucial especially when your focus is to improve customer experience. With long waiting lines, customers have to wait for a longer period, widely wasting time. This can frustrate shoppers, and force them to position or cancel their purchase plans. This directly affects the store’s sales and revenue.

This system runs with the network of cameras deployed near checkouts, inquiry desks, etc. Here is what you can expect from the system:
Monitoring queue in real-time
Examine queue duration and fluctuations throughout the business hours.
Performance of the staff.
Reducing queues and waiting times.

Plus, you can decide how many desks and staff are needed to serve a specific queue.

Improved customer experience

Retail data analysis helps in getting insights on shoppers to flow, visitor traffic, trend, behavior, average visit time, store’s capacity, staff allocation, etc. One more thing to remember here is that customers visit physical stores for the face to face interaction. That is the strength of traditional working businesses. Hence the store must offer the best customer services and a pleasant shopping experience.

Make sure your staff solve every query of each visitor, help them buy the perfect product, treat them well, and make them feel comfortable.