As a modern retailer, you know that understanding your customers is more important today than ever before. But do you know how Retail Video Analytics can help?
What exactly does that mean, you ask? Well you can check out our introduction to Retail Video Analytics to learn more, but in a nutshell video analytics takes your existing security camera footage and, through a combination of technologies such as artificial intelligence, facial recognition, data analytics and predictive technology, turns that video stream content into insights on what's happening in your store.
In this article, we look at three ways that Retail Video Analytics can help increase customer satisfaction, sales, and revenue.
1. Streamline the Store Layout
You might have a general sense of which areas in your stores are more popular and where your customers tend to congregate, but without data to back you up, how do you know if your intuition matches the reality? You can't be watching every inch of your store every minute of the working day, but your security cameras can. With a video analytics system, you can turn that camera feed into a detailed heat map that shows you how shoppers behave when they are in the store.
What direction do they turn when they enter the door? Where do they tend to congregate? Which areas have the longest dwell times? Are there different patterns at different times of the day? Do different demographics behave differently in your store?
Armed with data that addresses these questions and more, you can optimise your store layout to ensure all your products are in the right spots, and ultimately improve your conversion rate.
Of course that doesn't just mean a once off change to the store layout, but rather a process of continuous improvement. A good analytics platform will be able to combine data from the video analytics system with other key data points, such as your Point of Sale (POS) data. That means you can review the exact impact of your changes and continue to iterate to get it just right.
2. Measure In-Store Marketing with Data
So you've been working hard on new product displays to attract customer attention and drive purchases. But how do you know if they're really working?
Detailed data from your video analytics solution can show you which displays attract customer attention, as well as what effect they have on dwell times in the areas around those displays. If your analytics solution also pulls in data from your POS system, then you can further validate the success of your in-store marketing through your sales data.
And because you can typically get real-time (or near real-time) data from your in-store video analytics solution, you can even A/B test your marketing, by testing different versions of an in-store display and seeing which one attracts the most customer attention.
3. Keep the Checkouts Flowing
The checkouts are probably the most important area in your store. If customers are faced with long lines to check out, there's a risk you might lose those sales, to a competitor or to online.
Video analytics systems can help alleviate the risk of lost sales by proactively monitoring the situation at the checkouts in your store, alerting staff automatically when a queue starts to build up.
Many solutions also offer help with rostering so you can make the best use of your resources. With predictive analytics able to anticipate future demand, you can be sure that you will always have enough people on the ground to keep customers moving through the checkouts.
Retail Analytics
Explore WingArc Retail Analytics to understand how our analytics platform can help you understand your customers, reduce costs, and measure your marketing.
