Trends in Shopping Traffic Patterns

 

To help everyone navigate this year’s holiday season with extra safety and comfort in mind, Zenreach, the walk-through marketing company, has analyzed busiest and slowest traffic patterns to help you beat the crowds. Here’s what the data shows: 

• The busiest shopping hours during the week in 2020 are between noon and 2pm and then again between 5pm and 7pm 
• Friday, Saturday, and Sunday are the busiest shopping days of the week
  • Foot traffic peaks on Friday between 5pm and 7pm
  • Foot traffic peaks on Saturday between 1pm and 8pm, with this peak being the highest and most sustained throughout the weekend
  • Foot traffic peaks on Sunday between noon and 4pm 

• Tuesdays and Wednesdays are the lightest days for foot traffic, with the hours before 10am and after 9pm being the time periods where customers are least likely to encounter large numbers of other shoppers 
• Sunday before 11am is the least busy time period overall during the week 

John Kelly, Zenreach’s CEO said: “Looking at the foot traffic data from the past two months, we are clearly seeing that in-store traffic is still way down across the board compared to last year. For context, this year’s peak per-hour walk-ins are only at 36.4% of the 2019 hourly max figures. Another trend we are seeing in the 2020 data is that the weekends are comparatively busier than in 2019—whereas the hourly walk-in peaks and troughs on Saturdays and Sundays followed similar patterns relative to the weekdays in 2019, we’re seeing more sustained midday foot traffic on the weekend days this year.”

I had a chance to do an interview to learn more.

 

How are shopping patterns analyzed?

 

We have a software layer that sits on top of local WiFi—the WiFi network that is in store locations—that transforms the WiFi router into a sensor. Because most devices are set to look for WiFi, we use these device pings as a proxy for foot traffic. 

 

We then aggregate that foot traffic data and analyze it to show trends. As a result, we can slice and segment the data using variables like location, industry, date range, etc.

How does it help shoppers to know when stores are busiest?

 

We’re nearly eight months into the pandemic, and it’s clear that a large portion of the population still has serious health and safety concerns about in-store shopping. After observing a steep drop in foot traffic from March to mid-April, we saw a slow but steady uptick in retail visitation through the end of June. Since July, however, we have seen a flattening of retail traffic, and we have remained around the 50% mark for the past three and a half months.  

 

If we can give consumers an idea of when brick-and-mortar locations are experiencing the most and least foot traffic, they will be able to use this information to determine when they can do their shopping in a relatively unpopulated store—and avoid the times when they are most likely to encounter other shoppers. 

What factors contribute to shopping traffic patterns?

 

I think convenience is the most important factor for consumers. For example, we see spikes in foot traffic weekdays between the hours of 5p and 7p, right when many people are finishing up their work for the day. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday are the busiest shopping days of the week overall—days when many people are not working or get off work early, and thus have more opportunities to shop.