n recent years, e-commerce has been growing much faster than brick-and-mortar stores. This is largely due to the fact that online shopping enables retailers to profile and track customers on their website or mobile application, generating insights to personalize their offers. However, brick-and-mortar stores aren’t completely dead. The majority of purchases still happen in brick-and-mortar stores because shopping at physical stores does have its enduring appeal. People can go with friends, try on new clothes and experience product demonstrations. When they find something they like, they can get it right away. Just imagine how much more attractive physical stores will become when brick-and-mortar stores can start to collect information on their customers, as online stores have been doing.
For most brick-and-mortar stores, transactional data was only available at cash registers. However, there is so much data that can be collected from everything that happens before the moment customers make purchases. How many people enter and exit the store? What time is the busiest hour of the day? How do shoppers move inside the store?
People Counting Technology
People counting technology is one of the tools that brick-and-mortar retailers utilize to get answers to some of these questions. People counters are electronic devices that are installed at locations, usually at the ceiling, to count the number of people that enter certain areas. This technology has made it possible for brick-and-mortar retailers to gain knowledge about the number of people visiting their store, areas of the store with a high footfall, and the percentage of people who convert into purchasers. Recent developments of 3D people counting technology have even made it possible to distinguish children from adults since children rarely make purchases on their own and should be grouped with their family rather than counted as individual shoppers. Retailers then can utilize the collected information to improve their business by enhancing staff scheduling, store layout, and marketing campaigns.
Conventional people counting systems focus on people flow at the entrance
People counting technology can reveal valuable information to retailers, but the technology does have its downside. Retailers need to purchase specific cameras or sensors, the setup procedures are usually complex and require technical knowledge, and the store needs to be closed down while installing cameras or sensors. The high initial cost of using the technology is a barrier that hinders retailers from utilizing the people counters to gain valuable information on their visitors.
Cyclops
Cyclops has broken these barriers by transforming the process into a cloud-based AI platform that every retailer can set up themselves without any prior technical knowledge. Cyclops processes video streams from existing security cameras installed in retail stores and generates actionable insights using computer vision technology. Thus, retailers are not required to purchase any additional sensors. All it takes to gain access to valuable insights is 5 minutes to link the existing camera streams to the Cyclops platform.
In addition to measuring traffic footfall, Cyclops can also measure how much time people spend in different parts of the store and in front of the cashier. Retailers, therefore, can have a thorough understanding of what happens in their stores.
Cyclops is a retail analytics system that can help retailers generate insights into how their customers shop inside their stores. To understand more about how Cyclops can help retailers digitally transform their stores amid the COVID-19 pandemic, visit our website: https://dayta.ai
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