4 Ways Footfall Data Can Power Business Recovery Post-COVID
COVID-19 is one of the most difficult challenges the business world has faced in recent years. No one could have predicted how devastating the pandemic’s effects would be on businesses around the world when the news first broke. The lockdowns brought the economy to a halt, leaving businesses to struggle to stay afloat in uncharted waters.
Now that vaccines are being distributed and the world is almost free of restrictions, it is time for you to reopen your doors and rebuild after periods of uncertainty. Every business should have a post-COVID business strategy, but it is not easy to know where to begin. How do you position your company for success in the aftermath of a pandemic?
The solution is straightforward: rely on data; to be more specific, data on footfall. Given the current climate, the need for businesses to rely on data is becoming more apparent. Nothing should be left to chance, and data (footfall counting data) can assist you in intelligently determining where opportunities exist in your business.
Continue reading for four tips on how to use footfall data to jump-start your business’s recovery post-COVID.
What Is Footfall Analysis?
Footfall analytics expands on conventional methods of counting people who enter your store by employing technology to replace human counters at the door.
In addition to tracking and counting the number of people who enter your store, footfall analytics provides you with a variety of other insights. Some of these insights include information about how your customers browse when they are in your store, among other metrics.
How is Footfall Data Gathered?
Although the concept of footfall counting is simple, it requires the use of advanced technology such as radio-frequency identification or RFID, data analytics, and advanced machine learning algorithms to paint a picture of everything that happens in your store.
How to Use Footfall Data to Improve Business Recovery Post-COVID
If the world has learned anything, it is that things can change without warning. Having real-time data that shows these changes as they occur in your store can make or break your business’s recovery. As a result, here are four ways you can use footfall data to improve business recovery.
- Recognize When and How Your Customers Are Shopping
The pandemic has changed the way customers shop. As such, your business will need to make adjustments to accommodate these changes.
Following the progression of footfall in front of your store gives you a clear picture of the actual economic realities of your business post-COVID. You can, for example, measure the exposure of your marketing materials and compare footfall in your store to turnover, among other things.
With customer analytics like this, you will be able to understand customer behavior on a much deeper level and improve your decision-making regarding layouts, optimize the management of your store resources, and much more.
- Create Excellent Personalized Experiences
Contrary to predictions, the post-COVID economic recovery is moving much faster than expected. As a result, you must position your business to capitalize on emerging opportunities in order to rebound stronger. That being said, your strategies must be based on providing an excellent customer experience.
As a result of the pandemic, customers expect more personalized experiences, including shopping parties, digital try-on, appointment-only shopping, and more. Even as they return to physical spaces to enjoy the in-person shopping experience now that the world is opening up, they continue to expect personalized experiences.
To set your business up for success, you must create a new, adaptive version of the shopping experience in your store centered on enhanced customer service.
This is where footfall data can come in handy. You can use it to improve the customer journey and experience at your store. You could, for example, change your store hours to accommodate late-night shoppers or change the layout of your store to accommodate visitor flow.
Whatever strategies you choose to implement, creating customer experiences based on accurate data is the most effective way to maintain strong relationships with your visitors and foster customer loyalty in this new world.
- Ensure Your Employees’ Wellbeing
The speed with which your business recovers post-COVID will be heavily reliant on the full support of your employees. Your employees have had to adapt their lives and entire working environments as a result of the pandemic; therefore, as life resumes, you must prioritize their well-being when reopening your doors.
Make sure they are at the forefront of any changes you make to your business, and communicate with them to ensure everyone is on the same page. Starting with optimizing their work schedule.
Examine your store’s busiest hours and the volume of the foot traffic, then adjust staff schedules to maximize resources. Your goal should be to ensure that your employees are not overburdened by the influx of customers returning to your store.
As an added benefit for your company, optimized schedules ensure that your employees’ productivity levels are at their peak, which is excellent for the customer experience at your store and, in turn, your bottom line.
- Create Smarter Marketing Strategies
One of the most valuable aspects of footfall data is that it provides a detailed breakdown of store traffic. This allows you to create detailed customer profiles and observations of shopping behaviors, which is especially useful given the recent changes to the aforementioned behaviours as a result of COVID. You can then use this data to adjust your offerings and marketing.
Footfall analytics can be used to not only create more innovative marketing strategies but also to monitor the effectiveness of your marketing efforts. For example, footfall data can reveal whether in-store advertising for specific products has resulted in increased conversions.
Furthermore, footfall analytics can assist you in identifying new marketing opportunities.
For example, when Wal-Mart examined their footfall data more closely, they discovered that young men who came to their store on Friday to buy diapers would frequently also buy beer. The connection between these two items and the opportunity it presents would have gone unnoticed if it hadn’t been for footfall analytics.
While there is no way to predict what the ‘new business normal’ will be a year from now, one thing is certain: data analytics can be instrumental in understanding the evolving needs of consumers. Based on those insights, you can then create tailored experiences.
Just keep in mind that they should be adaptable so that you can make changes quickly when trends change.
Passionate Writer, Blogger and Amazon Affiliate Expert since 2014.
