EDMONTON, Alberta--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The current retail climate has been described as a ‘death rattle’, ‘death warmed over’ and ‘dismal’. But one retail analytics expert says it’s not the lower traffic that is the biggest concern, it’s the fact that too many retailers are squandering the traffic they do have because they are missing or misusing basic data to take corrective actions.
Author, CEO & Founder of HeadCount Corporation Mark Ryski says there’s a lot retailers can do to improve results despite lower store traffic. But retailers who don’t have or fully use traffic count data “are literally flying blind” he says. Or worse, they use sales transaction counts as a proxy for store traffic so they think they know what their store traffic is when they actually do not.
“There is a profound difference between transaction counts and traffic counts. It’s mind-boggling to me that, in the data-savvy world we live in today, many retailers still do not get this simple concept,” Ryski says. Using transaction counts as a proxy for traffic will lead to wrong conclusions. “It’s wrong and reckless,” he says.
Ryski says a decline in store traffic does not necessarily cause lower sales which he clearly demonstrates in his article ‘Traffic Trouble’. Based on analyzing store traffic and results from thousands of retail stores every month, Ryski says “if retailers focused as much attention on converting the traffic they already get as they do worrying about the traffic they don’t get, their results would be significantly better.”
By continuing to blame low traffic for poor sales, Ryski says “CEOs are giving Wall Street excuses they would never tolerate from their own store managers.”
Declining store traffic is serious, but Ryski says there are things retailers can do to thrive. Read Full Article: www.headcount.com/traffictrouble
As the leading authority on retail traffic and customer conversion analysis, HeadCount provides tangible, actionable insights for use by managers across retail organizations, from executives to store managers. The company has been working with retailers throughout North America for more than a decade. Mark Ryski is the CEO & Founder of HeadCount Corporation and the author of ‘Conversion: The Last Great Retail Metric’ and ‘When Retail Customers Count’.
