Retail has become complex yet the foundation for success is deceptively simple — it starts with traffic.

HeadCount is a specialized retail analytics firm providing objective, trusted advice and solutions to help our retail partners drive sales and understand their business better. We know that traffic data can and should be be fully leveraged throughout your entire organization if you are truly going to get a great return on your investment in technology.

What are we most passionate about? Assisting executives, functional leaders and store teams to answer critical questions that will help them understand and run their stores better. We’ve listed a handful of questions we regularly work with our clients to answer but they are just the tip of the iceberg:

How is your business performing overall relative to opportunity?
How effective is your marketing at driving traffic into your stores?
How well are your field teams converting the traffic you invest so heavily in getting into your stores?
Are you staffing effectively to ensure maximum conversion and great customer service?
How well are your new initiatives actually paying off

Can you answer all these questions? With traffic data you can … and whole lot more!

“Ask yourself any question about your business. My guess….you will be amazed to find that virtually all will be best answered through the lens of traffic data. The measure of your true business opportunity.”

Mark Ryski
Author, CEO & Founder HeadCount Corporation

What is every store visit worth?

Store traffic is a precious and valuable resource, but most retailers simply take it for granted. With store traffic data we can quantify the value of each shopper who visits your stores, focus your store teams on driving up sales per shopper and provide new insights into comparative store performance.

“We used to use transactions but have we ever seen the weakness in that approach now that we actually have HeadCount’s traffic and conversion data. Transactions don’t work. I can’t even imagine running a retail operation without traffic and conversion data. It would be like driving down the street blind”.

Jeff Donaldson, (former) Executive Director, GAMESTOP TECHNOLOGY INSTITUTE

How productive is my store labor?

Are your store employees scheduled and deployed to maximize sales results? Store staff should be scheduled to store traffic in order to most effectively align your labor resources with shopper demand. Using store traffic data, we can help you precisely measure how effectively store teams are performing relative to their own stores’ sales opportunity and benchmark performance across your chain.

Is my store traffic data accurate and reliable?

Store traffic data is only valuable if it’s accurate and reliable. Electronic traffic counters have been around for decades, and so too have data quality issues. If you are struggling to maintain traffic count accuracy or constantly dealing with data reliability issues that are creating more distraction than insight, we can audit your data, resolve the issues and get your program back on track.

How can I help my store teams be more accountable for results?

If you want your store teams to be accountable for the results they deliver, then you need to focus on what they control – shopper conversion and average ticket – not sales outcomes. With store traffic insights, your managers will know exactly what’s driving sales and where to focus their attention.

“Without the HeadCount traffic and conversion program, we would have a lot of data to inform us about what was happening with the business but we would not be able to connect all the data to the ultimate measurement: when a customer converts to a purchase”

Jeff Donaldson, (former) Executive Director, GAMESTOP TECHNOLOGY INSTITUTE

“We partnered with HeadCount on a rigorous six-month Conversion Improvement Test. There were so many benefits to working with HeadCount on this program. They over-delivered and the results were so compelling we switched from our previous vendor to HeadCount and immediately rolled out the program to more stores.”

Rachel Williamson, (former) VP Store Operations, JUSTICE

How can I better prepare my store teams for the holiday?

Are your store managers inundated with data? Do your managers know how to quickly analyze their store traffic trends and spot shopper conversion opportunities – especially during their peak holiday season? Our reporting designed specifically for managers will help them do that.

“Universally there’s a hunger for our managers to understand their business more in depth. They want to be able to figure out the areas of opportunity, but historically we haven’t provided them with the right tools. Our HeadCount scorecard is one of the right tools. Everyone who gets it loves it”.

Kevin Thompson, (former) VP Customer Experience, BARNEYS NEW YORK

How can I help each manager spot missed sales opportunities?

We understand that retail managers are not data analysts. In fact, most retail managers have never been taught how to interpret and apply insights at all. We curate the most important insights and make them immediately actionable in a way they will easily understand.

Is my marketing driving store traffic?

Are your marketing investments driving shoppers into your stores? Measuring the impact of your marketing efforts can be a challenge if you’re only relying on sales results to determine what worked. Store traffic and shopper conversion insights can help you quantify the impact of your marketing investments to make sure you get the biggest bang for your marketing buck.

How can I use data to motivate my team?

Virtually all stores have sales goals, but do your stores have a shopper conversion goals? They should! Shopper conversion is one of the key sales drivers that store-level staff can actually influence. Setting realistic, achievable shopper conversion goals can keep the store team focused and striving.

What is the best way to set motivating conversion goals?

Don’t set the same target regardless of where each individual store is starting from. That is not only unrealistic, it’s demoralizing. There is also not an ‘industry’ standard conversion rate, best practice…or silver bullet. But, there is a realistic and motivating method of setting targets that every retail leader should know.

Curious what traffic data could do for your business?

Want the information but don’t have time to read the books? Get curated insights from two-time author and renowned retail industry commentator Mark Ryski.