Shoppers battle weather to take advantage of deals

05 Feb '14

4 min read

Euclid, the leader of in-store retail analytics, measured data on nearly 25 million domestic shopping sessions during January, revealing that shoppers remained quite active in January despite the effects of bad winter weather across much of the country.

Shopper traffic and window conversion showed improvement over last year for another month in a row as shoppers looked to capitalize on a very promotional January.

Average visit durations rebounded to five-month highs as shoppers returned to healthier browsing behavior after the rushed holiday season. Despite some of the expected headwinds, we believe that these metrics illustrate a positive outlook for retailers' comp store sales during the month.

Euclid Traffic Index

Traffic in January decreased 17.6% compared to the previous month, but increased 1.4% compared to the same month last year. Shopping visits grew despite harsh winter storms across much of the country this year.

Shoppers appeared intent to take advantage of less crowded malls after the holidays and compelling end-of-season deals in January. Traffic was particularly benefited from strong weekends at the beginning of the month and around the Martin Luther King holiday.

Window Conversion

Window conversion in January, defined as the number of shoppers who enter a store as a percentage of the total foot traffic, rose to 8.4% from 7.3% last year. This was a slight decline from the 8.9% seen in December 2013.

The trend of highly aggressive promotions continued in January and once again appeared to positively impact window conversion as value-conscious shoppers were more successfully attracted into the store than last year. Window conversion remains close to its high for the last twelve months.

Bounce Rate

The percentage of shoppers who entered a store but left within five minutes ("bounce rate") was 10.7% in January 2014, up from 10.3% experienced in both the previous month and January of last year.

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