Foot traffic is the foundation for understanding the performance of your retail partners and the entire market. It helps to inform merchandising decisions, consumer understanding, demand forecasting, marketing tactics, and more.  With Placer, analyze foot traffic for any industry, chain, or store and compare between up to 8 different entities at one time.

You’ll be able to answer these questions after reading this article:

1. How do you review and compare foot traffic for different retail categories?
2. How do you review and compare foot traffic for chains?
3. How do you review and compare foot traffic for individual stores?

Get started with the following steps:

Step 1: Review foot traffic trends for retail categories

a. Open the Industry tab and search your category of interest. Industry metrics are available nationwide and also by state, CBSA, or DMA. To compare different categories or regions, you may add up to 8 different categories to the report.

b. Review the Overview and Variance reports to examine the latest foot traffic metrics across different aggregations (monthly, weekly, daily).

‍C. To compare industries in different periods, click the calendar icon, choose Advanced, and then Filer per Industry in the dropdown. This option allows you to choose a custom date range for any industry or region. In the example below, we compare the performance of superstores in Illinois in December of 2022, vs. superstores in Ohio in January of 2023.

‍D. To compare the same industry across different periods, click the three dots next to the industry name and choose Duplicate. Then, click the calendar icon, click Advanced, and then select Filer per Industry in the dropdown.

Step 2: Review foot traffic trends for chains

a. Open the Chains tab and search your chain of interest. Chains metrics are available nationwide and also by state, CBSA, or DMA. To compare different chains or regions, you may add up to 8 different chains to the report.

‍b. Review the Overview and Variance reports to examine the latest foot traffic metrics across different aggregations (monthly, weekly, daily).

‍C. To compare chains in different periods, click the calendar icon, choose Advanced, and then Filer per Chain in the dropdown. This option allows you to choose a custom date range for any chain or region. In the example below, we compare the performance of few superstore chain in Ohio across different months in early 2023.

‍D. To compare the same chain across different periods, click the three dots next to the chain name and choose Duplicate. Then, click the calendar icon, click Advanced, and then select Filer per Chain in the dropdown.

Step 3: To review foot traffic for specific stores, navigate to Explore and type the store location into the search bar

a. Up to 8 POIs^{Points (Locations) of Interest.} can be chosen at one time by checking the empty white box next to your POI in the center of the page or on the left sidebar. The number of POIs selected will appear at the bottom of the left sidebar. Once the POIs are selected, click Open Report and select Property. This will open the Property report.

Learn about Explore

b. Reports will default to the last 12 months, so you can click the calendar icon and choose the preferred date range, then click Apply. Scroll to analyze visit trends, get ranking information (Ranking Overview), explore visitors’ favorite places (Favorite Places), and understand the visitor journey (Visitor Journey^{The flow of commercial activity to and from any property that shows the top "Prior" and "Post" locations.}). Also, learn where visitors are coming from (select Trade Area^{Representation of the dispersion of home and work locations that drive traffic to any venue.} in the left sidebar), and more.