Calculating Footfall

BlackEdelweiss

I am trying to calculate the footfall past the door of my prospective new business and was just wondering how to get a daily average figure. I will do a bit more indepth research over the next few weeks but I just need to have a rough figure to add to my buisness plan for this weekend.
The location is in a retail park in the center of town.
I sat in the car park today(Saturday) between 2.30pm and 3.30pm. I counted 331 cars plus another 40 that parked in a smaller front car park.
I would think that between 12.30 and 3.30 would probably be the busiest hours so I would estimate that roughly 1000 cars would enter the park between those hours. At a rough estimate I would say that maybe another 300 cars entered between 9.30am and 12.30pm and 3.30pm and 5.30pm. That gives me a total figure of about 1300 cars to enter the retail park that day.
Would this be a semi accurate prediction or am I being overly generous or too conservative?
Can anybody give me a rough estimate for a weekly figure in there?
I know the weekend will be much busier than midweek but is there a general ratio of weekend to midweek shopping figures?
As I said I will do a more detailed survey over the next few weeks but this is just to use as a figure for today.

Budget Marketing

Hi,

It is hard to properly answer your question as there are so many variables, i cannot quite picture the site/location but going on the info you provided i can say the following:

Firsty if i were compiling the business plan and it was my business i would want more than a "rough" indication of footfall at my proposed business premises. Location is everything and you need to be dead certain of the vale the site wil bring to your business.

Regardless of how many cars entered it is all dependent on how many tenants are currently in the park. If there are a multitude and only 1k cars entered than that doesnt sound so impressive. What/who is the anchor tenant of the park?....would the custoemrs of that tenant be likely to be interented in your businesses products/services?

TALK TO CURENNT TENANTS....These people know exactly how many people visit their businesses each day. Talk to all of the tenants, they will in all likelyhood give you an indication of the numbers they are seeing in their units.

In all seriousness a proper calculation of the parks trade would take weeks to calculate, by sitting at the enterance and counting and recording and taking external factors into consideration. I have calculated such in the past, as i have a background in Marketing and i would imagine that if you are right and the park is taking in 1.3k cars on a sat then on a weekday it may only see 3-400 pass its enterance. Remember saturday is only 1/7 of a week and will be a day where most €€€ is made.

Hope this helps somewhat, sorry if I am rushing the answer, any further questions drop me a PM.

rob@budgetmarketing.ie

BlackEdelweiss

Hi Rob,
Thanks for that. I know my method will only give at best a very rough idea of the correct figures but in the absence of more accurate, professionally collected and analysed data it will have to suffice for now. Basically I am just trying to calculate what percentage of cars entering the park I will need to sell to in order to meet my minimum sales target.
I used smaller but similar figures for Thursday & Friday and significantly reduced the figures for Tuesday, Wednesday and Sunday. I came up with a rough figure of 3000 cars entering the park in a week.
It is a relatively small retail park and I am hoping my product will appeal to all those who enter, obviously it wont but it is not a business like a car parts shop or something that will have a very narrow clientèle.

Bandara

If your considering opening a business based on this footfall then you need a correct figure, not a guesstimate.

Pay someone 80 quid a day to sit there from 9am - 6pm and record on paper the number of cars that enter each hour of the day on a preprinted sheet.

Do it on a Monday, Thursday and Saturday. For a tiny outlay you will have correct data that is invaluable (and you will likely save back on roster savings).

If you can't afford the 240 then do it yourself.

You also need to bear in mind the weather effect on the respective days, and the time of the year based on the type of shopping center it is.

antoinolachtnai

You do need accurate numbers for this approach and it is worth getting them.

However you also need to think about what the number actually means.

One approach is this. You also need to figure out the percentage of those people who can convert into sales. You can do this by looking at a similar operation in another location. You count how many cars in the car park vs how many people 'convert', i.e., buy something.

This works for a cafe or a convenience store. However, if your shop is a 'destination' that people travel to rather than something that existing visitors to the centre will visit as an add-on, then this sort of methodology might not be right for you.

For a cafe or convenience store depending on passing traffic, I would say that what you really need to consider is the number of people actually walking past the door of the unit, rather than the number of cars that go through the car park. Positioning in the centre is pretty critical.

Budget Marketing

BlackEdelweiss wrote: »

Hi Rob,
Thanks for that. I know my method will only give at best a very rough idea of the correct figures but in the absence of more accurate, professionally collected and analysed data it will have to suffice for now. Basically I am just trying to calculate what percentage of cars entering the park I will need to sell to in order to meet my minimum sales target.
I used smaller but similar figures for Thursday & Friday and significantly reduced the figures for Tuesday, Wednesday and Sunday. I came up with a rough figure of 3000 cars entering the park in a week.
It is a relatively small retail park and I am hoping my product will appeal to all those who enter, obviously it wont but it is not a business like a car parts shop or something that will have a very narrow clientèle.

Well all i can say is that i think you are relying to heavily on guesstimates.
Just be carefull not to bank too much on these estimations/rent the property on these estimations.

In retail It wouldnt be uncommon for a unit to attract only 10% of visitors to the park, and perhaps only 33% of people who walk into the store would leave with a purchase.(based on a business I worked with recently) Unlike high street retail People go out of their way to visit a business in a retail park, so for the first while your customers will only be customers of your neighbouring tenants whom decide to drop in on a whim...