5 Most Important Things about People Counting Technology

Space is a unanimously significant asset whose purpose is at a premium in both industrial and commercial spheres. The prime way to maximize the potential of the brick-and-motor system is by understanding the most effective ways to utilize the available ground space. To use the available floor space, adjustments with layouts, production lines, and thoroughfares can be taken into consideration. On that note, people or visitor counting is the center of the endeavor.

What is ‘people counting’?

People counting technologies offer real-time knowledge of the available spaces and how employees or customers are using them. The data gets used for making actionable decisions on any space optimization methodology. In the 21^st century, advancements are happening to make people counting more versatile and modern.  The sought-after people counting innovations attempt at enhancing the workplace optimization method by enabling unprecedented levels of data reliability. To learn about the lesser-known facts about people counting, keep reading on.

5 Lesser-Known Facts about People Counting

People counting technologies are effective, and the solution got leveraged in retail stores over the world. Besides, the technology has proven to get effective in other spheres, including airports, banking halls, theme parks, casinos, hotels, gas stations, etc. However, business managers are still wondering about the technology. In spite of the relevant popularity, people need to grasp the concept of people counting. For them, here are the following five lesser-known yet important facts about it.

1) The Initial Visitor Counting System Was Manual

For some businesses, traffic analytics were significant. These businesses kept accurate traffic count when technology hadn’t have any advancing tools for the purpose. Thus, the initial sets of counting were manual. Employees got the task. They had to stand in the entrance and click a device as soon as people walked in or out.

During the busy hours, this manual process compromised the data collection’s accuracy. Sooner than later, pressure sensors replaced the system, which counted the visitors on the basis of their steps. As it failed to offer accuracy, the first set of digital counters replaced them.

2) Most Current Visitor’s Counters Aren’t 100% Accurate

No matter how significantly more accurate the modern door counters are, they don’t offer 100% accuracy. However, the 98% accuracy comes equipped with other features, including a 3D stereo vision sensor. During the high traffic volume, these devices are effective. The 3D counters either are bi-directional or unidirectional. The latter ones don’t distinguish between visitor’s entrance and exit. On the contrary, bi-directional counters track the exit and entrance of people separately.

3) Some Can Identify the Difference between Adults and Children

The modern stereo counters can track people by computing height through the multi-dimensional perception of depth. In simpler terms, the devices can measure visitor’s height while passing through. Depending on the height, these devices can distinguish adults from children. Customers may visit the location with their kids, although their children aren’t the target audiences. When kids get included, the data gets tinted. All in all, it affects the visitor behavior analytics like draw-in-rate and conversion rate. Using door counters that can exclude children is more significant as it increases the accuracy.

4) Maximum Number of Businesses Don’t Use the Collected Traffic Data

A majority of companies collect data, although they never use it. They need the data about the operations and the effect of certain strategies on sales. Additionally, the data also helps in identifying how customers behave. If businesses already have people tracking systems, you will require knowing the ways to leverage the visitor’s data.

5) The Retail Industry Comprises Most People Counting Cases

Businesses that get visitors to require visitor’s counting systems. These devices measure footfall, track the number of visitors, and evaluate the overall performance. But as business models depend on maximized traffics, the retail industry enjoys more visitors’ counting cases. The retail outlets that use these counters gain in-depth insight into the method of running the store. It helps in tracking and optimizing traffic, business operations, and performance.

Final Thoughts

In the current space-age world, retailers are opening doors to the public. They face the challenges of tracking and limiting the number of visitors in their stores. Thus, people counting sensors can transform the business effectively. 

Omnichannel Retail Strategy: The What, Why, & How of “In-Store” Shopping

When hearing the term “Omnichannel retailing,” it is often thought of as a “buzz” word: something that is somewhat trendy to talk about. But in reality, the COVID-19 pandemic has changed retail in a way that has brought to light just how important having an omnichannel strategy is for a retail business.

Why It matters

Having an omnichannel retail strategy and knowing how to implement it within a retail brand is crucial for many reasons.

During the lock down, e-commerce and mobile shopping have seen a rise in the number of shoppers and purchases. According to the Office for National Statistics, online retail sales have increased to 33.4% in May 2020 compared to 30.8% in April 2020. However, having a digital presence doesn’t make a brand automatically omnichannel; it’s not enough to showcase your products online if all other types of sales are unlinked. To make a brand truly omnichannel, all points within a customer journey should be considered, from utilizing email campaigns, social media, and different digital channels, all the way to brick-and-mortars. For physical locations, this can be achieved by leveraging retail analytics solutions.

How To Do It

With an excellent omnichannel strategy, retail stores can provide their customers with a seamless e- and m-commerce shopping experience. However, some brands remain uncertain about how to reopen their physical stores safely and efficiently to fully complete an omnichannel journey. Managing people’s flow and retail footfall traffic inside and outside of a store with a retail analytics software allows business owners to understand the customer journey better and thus optimize the store’s layout, marketing effectiveness, queue management, and staff scheduling.

Another solution that has become imperative in the last few months is real-time occupancy. With many restrictions on people’s numbers allowed to be present together at one time, occupancy monitoring solutions give customers the peace of mind they need to have a fun and safe shopping experience. V-Count’s real-time occupancy monitoring solutions allow customers and staff to stay informed about the number of people within a store in real-time. Through digital screens at the various entrances, customers can see safety recommendations displayed to know when it’s safe or not safe to enter.

Learn more about V-Count’s people counting solutions and how they help businesses achieve an omnichannel experience across physical stores with data analytics.

Why Pharmacies Must Start Listening Their Visitor Data

In recent years, the profit margins of prescription medicines across the industry have dropped, while the margin for OTCs remains strong and consistent.

These days, ‘OTCs (over the counter drugs)’ is the number one reason why people visit a pharmacy. But did you know that prescription medicines are an important source of revenue?  They are just as important as selling the front end products and prescribed medications.

So, how do you plan on increasing the sales of prescription medicines? By using the pharma retail store analytics or by relying on other legacy solutions.

Regardless of the solution you choose, you do not get any concrete data that can help you minimize the queues, improve marketing campaigns and increase sales. But fortunately, the pharmacies are in a physical space, and you can always rely on visitor analytics to see what is going in the business.

Here is how visitor analytics help the pharmacies to take their business to next levels.

Identify and Eliminate Queues in Real Time

Pharmacies have a dynamic environment. There are some areas where you will receive less foot counts than others, while others simply have a queue around them.

For example- the areas that stand next to the prescription counter and aisles that lead to the checkout register tend to have more queues. This is when the Queue Management solution comes into play.

You can identify the queue in real time, rotate the products and cash registers or POS machines in and out of the area and eliminate them seamlessly.

Follow The Merchandising and Inventory Effectiveness

With visitor analytics, you can figure out the conversion rate for each spot and the real performance of merchandise.

You can monitor the repeat visits for a given product within the pool of customers or on an individual level. Moreover, you can also choose prescriptions according to Mood, Age, and Gender.

It also allows you to predict the demand and supply by simply integrating the historical sales with the current foot traffic (Visits per day, unique visitors, new v/s old visitors).

Manage and Optimize the Staffing

With the visitor analytics, you can predict the traffic and create a staff schedule around it. Build a store environment where each team member can offer the best service to each visitor and increase sales.

It helps to identify when you need to break out a specific staffing plan or when to decrease the staff on a specific store area.

Compare and Improve Marketing Campaign Effectiveness

Have you ever wondered whether your marketing campaigns are driving visitors or not.

With the visitor analytics solution, you can check how your brochures in the front of stores, handouts and other marketing techniques are performing.

Monitor the amount of foot traffic you have. If you have high foot traffic, it certainly means that the marketing campaigns are working in your favor or else, you need to improve it.

You can also check the conversion rate and measure- whether you are actually converting the visitors or losing them due to lack of products, staff or service.

Boost Your Conversion Rate

While the basic principles of the Pharmacy industry are unlikely to change any time soon, the visitor analytics will yield you a great deal of actionable information.

There are a number of leading door counter device & visitor counting solutions that optimize your traffic, staffing, and marketing strategies, and help you to increase conversion rates at your pharma stores. Moreover, Pharmacies is much more than a place to fill in the prescriptions. It has all the supplements, medicines, convenience products, and other useful items.

Once you are aware of the foot traffic at each section of your store, you can work on the lower traffic ones and increase the sales.

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People Counter Benefits for Gas Stations

Did you know that 60% of gas station earnings are generated from other products and services irrelevant to fuel? According to the National Association of Convenience Stores in the United States, gas stations see profits decrease when overall prices increase. In other words, the majority of fuel retailers’ profits actually come from products sold in stores and most visitors are not stopping for the sole purpose of purchasing gas.

Even though fuel prices and location are crucial factors for a gas station’s success, they are not the only factors that attract and retain the customers. According to a research conducted by Market Force in 2016, “71% of respondents visited a traditional gas station, while 28% chose a grocer or big box retailer”. Besides the quality and price of fuel, customers seek a seamless and convenient experience as well as a humane design for their go to gas station.

These are some ways through which people counter can help fuel retailers better understand, serve and retain their customers:

Overall traffic count for visitors - People counters track the total visitor number of stores in gas stations, therefore providing insight on traffic patterns and peak hours. Gas stations can also use this data for high-level analysis. For instance, people trackers allow retailers to understand the overall trends during weekends and holidays. This in return gives the employees a good idea of what kind of traffic to expect and prepare for.

Understanding the conversion rate - People counter manufacturers allows retailers to merge sales and traffic statistics by integrating the data into one system. With this option, gas stations are then able to understand the conversion rate or how many people in total entered the store and the percentage of those who walked out with a purchase. Since most gas stations are chain establishments, people counters empower management to benchmark success across different locations. This allows gas stations to compare which stores generate more sales according to visitor traffic.

Effective resource allocation - It is a widely known fact that visitors stop at gas stations for toilet breaks. By installing door counter device, people counter technology in toilet entrances, management can view the data of people who is visiting their bathrooms. This can be analyzed with the overall store traffic to understand the conversion rate of people walking into the stores and the ones who actually used the toilet. With the help of people counters, branches can also manage rotation and cleaning accordingly. This allows cleaning staff to work efficiently which saves man-hour resources for the gas station. For instance, branches can schedule staff to clean the toilets every 50 people instead of a timed hourly basis as people counter provides real time email notifications to store managers once the entry number reaches a certain threshold. Accordingly, management can also view which branches have the most bathroom usage and invest resources in those locations first. 

Understanding customer behavior - People counter can also be used in combination with heat map device installments. While people counters track the number of visitors in a store, heat map deep dives into what people are actually doing and where they linger. It identifies whether visitors are solely using the shop for toilet breaks, to purchase refreshments or both.

Push notifications - For gas stations chains that have already implemented a smart phone loyalty application, people counters can prompt notifications to visitors’ smartphones when they enter the store. Notifications can vary from safety reminders such as “don’t forget to put on your seatbelt and enjoy your drive!” to special promotions about in-store loyalty points, products or discounts. Push notifications is an interactive gesture to engage with the visitors and communicate with them.

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How to leverage in-store performance to compete with digital retail

In e-commerce, the process to track the consumer footprints are fairly straightforward as every touchpoint is traceable. Take a step back into the traditional brick and mortar store, more anonymity remains with the browsing and purchase behavior. Interaction with merchandise and in store employees make it somewhat more complex to optimize and understand.

Retailers are implementing people counting technology across their stores to fully capture the insight of every shopper entering the space. This advancement does not simply offer people counting services, but allows the opportunity of a thorough relationship establishment when understanding the needs and wants of consumers from a granular view.

What is an actual conversion?

As one of the most widely used term in retail, the conversion rate allows managers to accurately measure store performance and how many prospective are generating purchases. The general methodology is calculating the total transactions divided by the number of people entering the store. However with advancements in human counting sensor, retailers today have the luxury to view this from another perspective.

When the consumer steps foot within the doors, we can assume that the marketing strategy has been effective. As they browse, interact with the items and the employees, it can also be anticipated that there has been an purchase intent. When all prior signs have been shown and yet the consumer walks out with an empty handed, people counting technology comes as a solution to understand why the sale has failed.

With people counting technology, managerial decisions surpasses a mere gut feeling. Data generated from people counters enables retailers to understand the actions on consumers and understand where they are lingering. Ultimately, enabling the identification of the actual amount of browsers who converted to purchasers. 

 What about in store operations?

Are the lunch breaks poorly timed? Are employees dedicating too much time to operational tasks instead of customer service? Do sales drop when store management is absent? These are all critical questions to understand why a sale is lost.

University of North Carolina published a study in 2015 on retail operations in which the experiment was conducted within a Midwestern Department store through leveraging retail intelligence. The conclusion of the study depicted that through effective operations (1 additional employee increase) within the self-service fitting room led to an increase of overall sales per hour by 15.98%. Through this study, findings indicate the necessity to compliment observations, intuition and retail data in making decisions to optimize retail store operations.

With retail intelligence and solid analysis, decisions can be made with reliability to set parameters and goals on merchandising, operations and sales. People counters pinpoint issues to increase store effectivity as heat map technology can identify cold areas which consumers rarely linger or purchase from. Management can then leverage this insight to determine whether shelf heights, product placements and in-store displays are in line to what the consumer seeks.

People counters identifies opportunities within various time frames and popular consumer pathways. This data also serves as insight for sales teams to achieve higher performance with reliability. With this optimization, this solution enables sales representatives to increase their performance and capture every potential sale; hence in the long term becoming more attentive and engaging to over exceed every consumer's expectations.

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Monocular vs. 3D Stereo Cameras-How Retailers Track People Traffic in Their Stores

People traffic counter devices help retailers understand what is going on inside their stores including customers’ traffic paths and shopping patterns, effects of in-store marketing 3D stereo vision cameras activities, and measure conversion rates, which is a vital piece of information for businesses’ future.

There are various people traffic counters in the market, which retailers can employ such as single lens (monocular) and. Both of these people counter devices have their strengths and weaknesses in terms of accuracy, imaging and price. 

Monocular Video Analytics – (Single Lens Sensors)

Monocular people counter devices have only one built-in lens in them that catch people’s images and analyze them. The major difference here is that, the device catches the image through a single lens and either process it in itself or send it to a central server or an in-store server for analysis.

Single lens people counting devices can measure up to 90% accuracy, but unfortunately they have a very important shortcoming, which is depth. Because these devices consist of a single lens, they can’t differentiate between the changing environment conditions such as shadows and extra lighting and real-time people images. At the end of the day, they can be accurate for most door counting situations, but not guaranteed. 

3D Stereo Cameras - (3D Video Sensors)

The major aspect here is that 3D stereo people counter devices can capture the image at a three dimensional format, so the depth factor is always going to be the key. These devices analyze the images at a four data-point system; height, mass, speed, and direction, so the accuracy will always be higher than 90%. Since all the shadows and lighting don’t have depth, 3D stereo people counter devices can differentiate between these conditions and real time people imaging.

The one and only shortcoming of a 3D stereo people counter device is the cost factor. Since it has a double lens and so many advantages compared to other types of people counter devices in the market, it is priced pretty high. Because the solution requires extra special devices and equipment, the price automatically increases.

Both single lens and 3D stereo people counter devices have their own advantages and disadvantages. The crucial thing here is for retailers to decide what exactly they need to observe and what is important for them in their stores, hence invest in a people counter device according to their expectations.

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