People Counting: A Strategic Lever for Retail

Published on October 21, 2025

In retail, understanding visitor behavior has become just as essential as tracking sales at the checkout. For a long time, retailers relied solely on transaction data to evaluate store performance. However, these figures do not tell the whole story. They reveal what was sold but do not indicate how many opportunities were missed.

This is where in-store people counting becomes crucial. By measuring visitor flow and combining it with checkout data, retailers gain a much richer and more nuanced view of their stores’ real performance. This combination transforms raw data into strategic indicators, enabling not only a better understanding of what is happening but, above all, proactive action.

Why Checkout Data Alone Is No Longer Enough

Sales recorded at the checkout are the final outcome of a much broader process. Between the moment a potential customer walks through the door and the moment they reach the checkout, many factors come into play: the greeting, product availability, the in-store experience, staff efficiency, and the relevance of promotions.

A store can generate high sales, but if traffic is significant and the majority of visitors leave without buying, this reflects a loss of potential. Conversely, a store with modest traffic but a high conversion rate demonstrates a remarkable ability to turn visitors into buyers.

In other words, without measuring traffic, checkout data provides an incomplete and sometimes misleading picture of performance.

The Contribution of People Counting

In-store traffic counting consists of measuring, with technologies such as the 3D vision people counter offered by Axper, the number of people entering and leaving a store. When combined with checkout data, this information becomes the foundation of key performance indicators (KPIs) that allow detailed analysis and proactive management.

Revealing KPIs

Among these indicators, three stand out in particular:

• Conversion rate: This represents the percentage of visitors who made a purchase. It is perhaps the most telling indicator, as it directly measures a store’s ability to convert traffic into sales.
• Performance on Traffic: This calculates the number of sales generated per visitor entering, as measured by the foot counter. It allows retailers to evaluate the overall effectiveness of their commercial strategy, independently of total visitor volume.
• Staff productivity: By integrating worked hours, it becomes possible to know how many customers were served per employee. This indicator helps balance team efficiency with customer satisfaction.

Identifying Strengths and Areas for Improvement

Thanks to these KPIs, managers can answer crucial questions that traditional checkout data alone cannot provide.

• What is the real potential of each store?
  Two stores may display the same revenue but have very different performances. If one receives 1,000 visitors for 200 transactions and the other 500 visitors for 200 transactions, their commercial efficiency is not comparable.
• What are the periods of low productivity?
  KPI analysis highlights moments when many visitors walk through the door but few make purchases. This points to potential issues such as insufficient staff availability, stockouts, unattractive store layout, or poorly targeted promotions.
• How to adjust staffing levels?
  By comparing traffic measured by the counter with worked hours, it becomes possible to forecast precisely when to increase staff to capture more sales, and when to reduce staffing levels without harming performance.
• How to optimize costs without sacrificing results?
  A precise counting solution highlights off-peak periods where reducing human or energy resources becomes possible, thus improving profitability.

A Tool for Better Resource Management

Beyond performance analysis, Axper’s people counting tools become a powerful system for operational management.

• Staff scheduling: By aligning staff levels with peak periods, customer wait times are reduced, and service quality is improved. Conversely, by reducing staff during off-peak times, labor costs are kept under control.
• Marketing campaign optimization: Measuring the impact of a promotion is not limited to observing a sales increase. It is also about knowing whether the campaign truly generated more visitors in-store, and whether those visitors actually purchased.

Turning Data into Strategy

The value of a traffic counter lies in its ability to transform raw data into actionable insights. Each figure collected is a clue that, when correctly interpreted, enables informed decision-making.

• Operational data: schedules, staff management, task distribution.
• Strategic data: brand positioning, choice of locations, lease negotiations in shopping centers.
• Marketing data: targeting promotions, analyzing purchasing behaviors by period or event.

By integrating a foot traffic solution into their strategy, retailers equip themselves with a tool capable of supporting growth, strengthening competitiveness, and maximizing profitability.

A Decisive Competitive Advantage

In a market where consumers are increasingly demanding and margins are often tight, having a clear and complete view of performance is a major competitive advantage.

Stores that rely solely on checkout data risk missing valuable insights, such as the proportion of potential customers who did not convert. Those that integrate Axper door counters, however, benefit from a complete dashboard, allowing them to manage actions more effectively and adapt their strategy in real time.