Foot Traffic Is Vital For A Successful Retail Property

Owners of retail businesses that want to expand by adding a new location have many factors to consider when choosing that new site. Identifying a new site for what you plan to become a successful retail property involves determining the property’s accessibility, its visibility, its proximity to any potential competitors, and favorable area demographics are crucial to selecting a potential site. A factor that is also crucially important but seldom considered is the amounts of and trends in foot traffic at that location.

The counting of vehicles on any surrounding roads and highways is frequently used in deciding on a retail business site. While these counts can give an estimate of the area’s traffic activity level that are reasonable, they cannot identify how much of that volume of traffic actually stops to shop at that location. Another potential inflation in these numbers is that traffic volume counts are collected for all twenty four hours in a day. Retail businesses are only open for eight to 12 hours per day. What if the highest traffic volume occurs before or after store hours?

Retail businesses interested in leasing space in a shopping mall or major shopping center obtain vital information by also asking for any foot traffic measurements that have been collected at the entrances to stores within the mall or retail center. This actual customer traffic value provides a much more accurate indication of the number of potential shoppers who shop at any given property. Values from any successful retail property are especially helpful. These figures are collected per day so they also provide an analysis of the volume of seasonal traffic per store. Week by week comparisons are also possible.

Retail businesses that plan to expand into new locations should look for retail markets with the highest volume of foot traffic in its stores. This is especially true in large markets such as major cities like Los Angles, Chicago and New York. However, if you prefer to keep your expansion in the same geographic region in which you are currently located, examine available data to find the towns and cities that are demonstrating the most growth in annual foot traffic. This helps you take advantage of achieving early penetration of the growing market.

Any amount of annual foot traffic can be affected by several causes. An area experiencing economic change; any lack of convenient access due to nearby construction, especially of roadways; changes in the merchandise that a retail store offers its customers; any severe weather conditions (blizzards, floods, hurricanes, tornado, excessive heat or cold); and failure or closings of adjacent businesses that also draw in potential customers may all have a detrimental effect on customer traffic.

Cities and towns with a high density of customer traffic may also be ready for some new retail offerings to explore. Shoppers love to explore new and different shops. These areas are important to explore when choosing a site for future expansion. Leasing a successful retail property takes research plus careful thought and planning. Make use of all site selection research available to identify properties with high traffic and growth trends.