Customer journey analytics refers to the metrics that track the customer’s buying process within a retail store. From the moment before a potential customer enters a retail location to the moment they walk out of it, they interact with different store sections and exhibit certain behaviors. These interactions and behaviors determine if the visitor will make a purchase or walk out without doing so.

From entry to exit, there are multiple steps for every customer’s buying journey that may eventually lead to a purchase. By monitoring and understanding this data, store managers can start implementing strategies to improve this journey and increase traffic, conversions, and revenues.

With V-Count’s state-of-the-art Ultima AI people counting sensor and Business Intelligence platform, you can accurately track various metrics in your visitor’s journey to optimize every step of the buying process.

Improve Draw-in Rate
The buying process starts when customers see your store and decide whether to enter or not; this makes the draw-in rate a critical metric for a retail store. The Draw-in rate measures the number of visitors entering a store against the number of people walking by. The higher your draw-in rate, the more visitors you attract, and the higher your store’s sales potential.

V-Count’s People Counting technology provides a means to track and improve your draw-in rate by improving window displays or offering discounts to pull more visitors into your store.

Optimize Customer Path
Once a customer enters your store, the next step of the process begins. They move around, looking for the items they want. Depending on how easy it is for them to find products and how satisfied they are with what they see, they either make a purchase or leave.

V-Count’s Heatmap solution allows retailers to optimize visitors’ flow throughout their stores. It shows how visitors move from the entrance to the different store sections or zones, how easy it is for them to find what they want, which areas they linger at the most, and the chokepoints in their journey.

With this data, store design can be improved to resolve chokepoints and help customers avoid bottlenecks or in-store delays. Moreover, by benchmarking popular zones and improving the rest accordingly, managers can take the necessary actions to optimize the customers’ path and increase satisfaction, leading to purchase.

Identify Top-Performing Products
Customers typically have favorite products and brands, and there will be store sections that attract more footfall than others. Stores can improve customers’ journeys by making busy sections as clutter-free as possible. Furthermore, effort must be made to ensure that bestselling products never run out.

The V-Count Heatmap and zone counting solutions measure the occupancy level of different areas in a store. With data from heatmap sensors, stores can identify which areas customers love to visit and the products they buy most frequently.

On another note, zone heatmap data can be maximized to increase a store’s earning potential. For example, hot zones can be used to boost engagement for new products and raise publicity for upcoming offers and sales events. Unattractive products may be delisted or cross-sold with bestsellers to move them off the shelves quicker.

Improve Staff-to-Customer Ratio
No customer’s journey is complete without some interaction with retail store staff. Visitors may need the help of sales associates to complete their buying process, perhaps because they have doubts about a particular product or brand or because they need convincing before committing to a purchase.

By maintaining an optimal customer/staff ratio at all times, retailers can ensure that no sales opportunities are lost because they didn’t deploy enough staff.

By combining V-Count’s People Counting and Business Intelligence Platform (BIP), stores can optimize staffing even during the busiest hours. The platform analyses the data using the latest AI tools and provides retailers with actionable data to make adjustments.

Reduce Checkout Queue and Cart Abandonment
The final step of every customer’s journey is checkout. 1 in every 3 or about 24% of shoppers abandon their carts at physical retail stores if they have to wait at checkout for longer than 5 minutes.

V-Count’s Queue Management system is effective at keeping checkout counters queue-free. Retail store managers get detailed reports on how many sales opportunities were lost per hour due to long queues. This may be fixed by increasing checkout staff or creating emergency checkout counters during busy hours.