The idea of scheduling staff to traffic is an old idea, but it’s an important one. It also just makes sense. You want to have your store labor applied to when shoppers are actually visiting the store.  So why are so many retailers not doing this properly? 

The pressure to drive sales is on. But you’ll never get there if you can’t lose the blind spots that keep you from key operational insights that can help you make better decisions and deliver better results.

Labor is one of the biggest expenses, and given the labor shortages that so many retailers are experiencing, it’s vital to make sure you’re scheduling your labor as efficiently as possible. But it’s not just about how much labor you have. It’s also about what the labor is focused on.

You’re frustrated that the millions you’re spending on marketing aren’t translating into the sales you expected. But the problem is your store teams don’t have what they need to make that happen. The good news is…you can easily give it to them. 

We often hear from store managers that they are frustrated because head office is telling them to sell more – often setting stretch goals – but nobody is actually helping them figure out how to get there.  The good news is: giving your store teams the tools they need to succeed is a lot easier than you might think. 

It is surprising how many retailers actually use transaction counts as a proxy (approximation) for traffic. Or they use transactions counts as a proxy in some cases like in workforce management systems or goal setting. But this is a really bad idea. 

One question we get asked a lot is how many stores should have traffic counters so that traffic insights can be extrapolated to all stores in the chain.

We totally get it. Budgets are tight. Anything you can do to reduce cost is worth exploring, especially if you operate a large chain, So...do you really need to track traffic in all your stores or can you just simply install traffic counters in a sample of stores and then extrapolate the results?