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  • #2141422

    Looking for foot traffic data or software

    by businessgrower ·

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    Hi all,

    I have a brick and mortar shop and I’ve read some articles on how you can use foot traffic in your local business to analyze and optimize your business. I’ve seen some foot traffic data providers but they seem to be more enterprise focussed. I just need basic data to see at what time of the day / week my shop is most busy. I can use my POS payment data for that, but I’m mostly interested at what time nearby competitors having more or less foot traffic data.

    This way I know better when to run my special events/ marketing campaigns.

    Does anybody know any services that might be able to help me with that?

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    • #2414040
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      Should be easy.

      by rproffitt ·

      In reply to Looking for foot traffic data or software

      That is you could hire a student to perform a study for the days in question. They camp out and do the count for the time and days you want. You have your exact data for the competitors you want to know about.

      I won’t bore you with the problems of brick and mortar and how you should have your web presences, Facebook, Yelp and such.

      • #2414037

        Good idea. I also found another solution meanwhile.

        by businessgrower ·

        In reply to Should be easy.

        Thanks. Yes, maybe that is the most reliable way to count people. However, long-term this is taking a lot of resources ($$$) compared to using technology.

        Meanwhile, I found the foot traffic web app https://besttime.app
        I’m probably going to use this as long term solution, but let me know if somebody has other suggestions.
        BestTime provides me retail foot traffic data by just typing in the name of my competitors. Now I can easily see when my competitors have fewer visitors, so I know better when to run my promotions.
        It looks a bit similar to Google Popular Times data, but also includes week overviews. The cool thing is that I can also filter and analyze the foot traffic of my competitors: For example, only show the shops that are busy on Wednesday afternoon. I also created a small dashboard that shows me every day what the foot traffic forecast looks like. They don’t provide absolute visitor numbers like students can provide, but they do have live data for some of my competitors. I think they are using smartphone signals to generate foot traffic data. So far I’m using the service for free.

        • #2414036
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          That doesn’t look cheap to me.

          by rproffitt ·

          In reply to Good idea. I also found another solution meanwhile.

          Remember I took what you wrote up top about competitors. The site you shared isn’t a sure thing for many locations so my bet is the usual method I noted is the real fix.

          I don’t know if you know about statistics etc. but you don’t need to do 100% of the time counts to arrive at good enough numbers.

        • #2414035

          True

          by businessgrower ·

          In reply to That doesn’t look cheap to me.

          You are right that BestTime.app doesn’t have data for all my competitors, but it has most of my competitors (maybe it depends on your country/ area and lockdown restrictions at the moment).
          Your method is more reliable for sure. You mentioned ‘That doesn’t look cheap to me’. So far I’m getting all the data I need through the free demo that seems to have a daily limit. So not too bad as long-term alternative.

          I will look a bit more into the statistics how to use your suggested real fix. Thanks.

    • #2414028

      foot traffic data provider

      by imstephanieys ·

      In reply to Looking for foot traffic data or software

      We have been looking into getting a foot traffic data provider after reading about it, but we weren’t sure which one

      • #2414027
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        I’ve found it depends on the “buyer” of the data.

        by rproffitt ·

        In reply to foot traffic data provider

        You’ll encounter those that demand the numbers be accurate and then those that understand that even if it was 100% accurate you overpaid for too much accuracy.

        The ones that don’t overpay seem to understand statistics and sampling methods.

        There’s another problem is that by measuring other stores you find that count but not why these customers are at that store.

    • #2412960

      foot traffic

      by deborasumopayroll ·

      In reply to Looking for foot traffic data or software

      Foot traffic data, sometimes referred to as footfall, is an insight into the number of consumers passing through and visiting certain areas, such as malls or businesses.
      One method to get an approximate foot traffic count is by analyzing an anonymous mobile location data panel and using detected visits as a proxy for foot-traffic. Many retail analytics & consulting firms rely on SafeGraph’s foot-traffic data which is based on this method.
      Thermal sensors count and measure foot traffic by detecting the light emitted by human heat. These sensors are placed either on the top or side of a doorway, and they work by capturing the heat signature of a person’s head as they walk through.

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