Top 5 People Counting Technology Providers in 2019

People counting technologies are transforming how retailers and business organizations manage visitor traffic at their physical locations. Gone are the days when stores see lots of foot traffic but minimal sales. These days, technological tools are being used to predict how customers will behave, improve how stores operate and boost conversion rates. The solutions are also leveraged to optimize staffing and advert campaigns. All these combine to help businesses run more efficiently, attract more customers, and make more money.

If you are in the market for people counting solutions, here are the best five options in the market:

1. V-Count

V-Count provides best-in-class people counting and visitor analytics technologies to retail companies and business organizations from all over the world. V-Count’s solutions help these businesses gain a better understanding of how customers behave in their physical locations. They also enable business managers to predict how customers will behave in the future and how these habits can be leveraged to maximize store sales and profits.

Some of the most recognizable names in retail use V-Count’s solutions to make the most of visitor traffic. And notable brands in partnership with the company include Samsonite, Samsung, Marks & Spencer, Sephora, and Ford Motors.

Solutions

a. People Counting

With V-Count’s people counting software, organizations can accurately measure the number of visitors that pass through their physical locations at any given time. This information can be used to assess store performance, measure the effectiveness of marketing campaigns, calculate the conversion rate, and identify peak/off-peak periods.

b. Queue Management

The queue management system monitors wait for lines in real-time, notifying the store manager when queues are forming in any part of the store. Shorter times at checkout has been found to increase customer traffic and conversion rates significantly.

c. Heatmap

Heatmap technology tracks how visitors move around in your store. It tells you which sections receive the most visitors, which products are your customers’ favorites, and in which ways you can optimize the layout of your store to ensure even more engagement.

d. Mood/Age/Gender (MAG) Recognition

MAG helps retail stores separate their visitors into their different demographics. Find out how many of your customers are women, how many are middle-aged, and how satisfied they are when they leave your store. This information can be leveraged to provide a personalized (as well as better) shopping experience to all visitors.

MAG has also been useful in creating smart in-store advert displays that only show content that is relevant to the viewer.

e. Business Intelligence Platform

V-Count’s Business Intelligence Platform is a business reporting tool that turns traffic data into actionable reports. Knowing how many people visited your business location, and your peak periods is one thing. It is another thing entirely to use that data to create an automated staff schedule that saves you labor costs and ensure optimal staffing at all times.

The Business Intelligence Platform analyzes all collated data. In return, it gives managers regular reports on how well their physical locations are performing. It also provides easy-to-understand recommendations to help businesses improve operations, make more sales, and grow steadily.

Competitive advantage

What sets V-Count apart from the chasing pack is how they have a solution for every step of the buying process. Whether you are trying to attract more visitors to your store, convert these visitors to regular buyers, or turn your buyers into lifetime customers/ambassadors, V-Count has you covered.

The Business Intelligence Platform, particularly, is a masterstroke. It turns unintelligible data into reports that the least tech-savvy person can understand and implement.

2. Traf-Sys

Traf-Sys combines its people counting system with a business reporting tool, providing businesses with a technology they need to measure and improve business performance. Traf-Sys’ solutions track footfall, analyze traffic data, and provide managers with information that helps them boost profitability and improve operations.

Retail stores, Shopping malls, casinos, universities, museums, and art galleries leverage Traf-Sys to optimize labor, improve advertising, and increase conversion rates. Notable partners include Harley Davidson, Sprint, and the University of Texas.

Solutions

a. Visicount

Traf-Sys’ Visicount counts the number of visitors that pass through a physical space, tracks visitor pattern, and gathers other valuable visitor data. With a user interface that was designed to ensure ease-of-operation and user experience, Visicount is a good solution for growing businesses.

b. Business reporting

Data collected by Visicount is sent to the business reporting tool for in-depth analysis. Afterward, detailed reports that measure important store metrics are generated. These reports can be then be leveraged to improve operations and make better business decisions.

Competitive advantage

Traf-Sys provides users with comprehensive reports in varying format styles, with analyses also presented in chart/tabular forms. This, coupled with a user-friendly interface, makes Traf-Sys’ software a reliable option for businesses looking to boost sales and optimize operations without too much oversight.

Traf-Sys also offers prospective customers a free quote that highlights set-up costs and potential business benefits of taking advantage of their solutions.

 3. Ipsos

Ipsos provides an array of retail management software that has proven effective in helping brands scale up their businesses. Ipsos solutions like people counters, journey mapping, and retail insights are critical tools in analyzing footfall and customers’ in-store behavior. While primarily retail-facing, the solutions have also been leveraged for museums, public spaces, and garden centers.

Solutions

a. People counting software

Ipsos’ people counting software provides a foundational basis for all their other products. In addition to tracking how many visitors enter a physical location, it also provides insight into how in-store operations can be improved, how staff schedules can be optimized, how to maximize customer traffic, and how to boost conversion rate.

b. Customer behavior analysis/journey mapping

This solution leverages customer traffic data to create an outline of how customers move around/behave in the space. Customer movement/behavior data is further harnessed to improve product placement, design store layout that increases engagement, and draw-up impactful marketing campaigns.

c. Retail customer experience

This offers retailers guidance on how to give every visitor a personalized customer experience. This, in turn, ensures continued patronage and prolonged customer dwell times. The more customers feel like your store was designed to suit their individual needs, the more they will visit, and the more time they will spend in your store. This translates to more sales.

Competitive advantage

Like V-Count above, Ipsos provides traffic analytics and retail management solutions for every step of the customer conversion process. In addition to the solutions listed above, Ipsos also has software that aids workforce productivity and provides retail insights. Unlike V-Count, however, there is no free trial for new customers.

4. CountWise

CountWise has several visitor analytics software that enables real-time monitoring of customer behavior. They also offer users a business intelligence platform to analyze collected data and provide valuable business reports. CountWise, like all the other software providers listed, gives businesses recommendations on how they can maximize footfall, boost sales, optimize marketing, and improve operational efficiency.

Notable brands in partnership with CountWise include American Airlines, Fossil, Verizon, and Ferrero Rocher.

Solutions

a. I-Count

Provides multi-zone and 2-directional counting using motion detection and shape recognition. I-Count measures visitor footfall with near-perfect accuracy.

b. Q-Count

A multi-lane queue management software that tracks in real-time how many people are on checkout queues or wait lines. Notifications are sent out when queues are getting too long.

c. D-Count

D-Count measures how many customers each store attendant is catering to at any given time and how much time customers spend in front of service stations. This information can be used to improve store operations and optimize staffing.

d. Z-Count

With Z-Count, managers can collect data that details how customers behaved in a particular zone in a store. This data can be analyzed to optimize store sections with below-par performance.

Competitive advantage

CountWise provides excellent resources for visitor monitoring in physical locations. They claim to have better pricing options than major competitors, but given how marginal the price difference is, this hardly counts as an advantage.

5. SMS Store Traffic

SMS Store Traffic has traffic management and analytic software that counts visitors and provides information about traffic patterns in physical locations. This information is vital in measuring the visitor-customer conversion rate and the impact of marketing on traffic. It can also be used to calculate how much it costs (in advertisement $) to attract a customer to the store.

By quantifying these metrics, it becomes easier to make adjustments to how the store operates and how advert campaigns are implemented. Over time, these adjustments will translate to better in-store operations, higher conversion rates,  more effective ad campaigns, and more significant profits.

Solutions

a. Traffic Management and Analytic Software

TMAS comes with a simplified dashboard that displays all significant metrics and shows managers how well the store is performing in real-time. The software tracks analyzes and provides reports on traffic, sales, conversion, sales performance, capture-rate, pass-by traffic, and so on.

The TMAS dashboard is OS-Agnostic and can be accessed from all major devices, including smartphones. It integrates easily with POS data and staffing schedules.

Competitive advantage

The TMAS is SMS Store Traffic’s one-stop-shop to track traffic, analyze trends, and provide business reports. On the one hand, it provides a streamlined platform for real-time customer monitoring and management. On the other, however, it prompts questions on how effective the platform can be with so many moving parts.

There you have it, the best people counting technology providers for the year 2019. While many of the software serve similar purposes, some have proven to be more effective than others. While solutions with good track records have some advantage, picking the right company to partner with will mostly come down to business needs and personal choice. A free trial helps make your decision easier, and whenever it is offered, take advantage of it.