For decades, physical retailers have tried to answer the question of how many shoppers actually enter their stores on any given day. It’s very useful knowledge for store operations and the technology utilised to find it has changed dramatically over the years. Some of the world’s best known stores at the turn of the century didn’t use footfall counters and operated on a sales-first strategy. Ultimately, if people are showing up and buying products, there’s not much we really need to change.
One of the UK’s best known high street retailers, The Works, has recently decided to jettison their online store, focusing purely on brick-and-mortar to keep the physical shopper to the forefront. This eschews any inconveniences that may come with online orders, shipments, click and collects and other things that could take up the time of their on-site workforce.
Following CEO, Gavin Peck’s panel discussion at The Future of Retail conference in London, which took place just yesterday, he posted on LinkedIn saying “Over the last year, we've made some big decisions at The Works, including closing our website and putting all our energy into delivering the best possible value and experience for our customers through our stores. They weren't necessarily the obvious choices, but they were the right ones”.
The Retail Bulletin previously stated this year that “Online was never a big part of the business. The Works had been a multi-channel retailer since 2012, but over 90% of its sales came from its roughly 500 stores. Dropping e-commerce let it simplify operations and focus on its core strength as a bricks-and-mortar retailer, where it sees room for about 100 more locations. Chief executive Gavin Peck framed the move as a way to reduce risk and support long-term profitable growth.”
Similar stores to The Works could decide to adopt a roadmap like this, prioritising the shoppers in their physical locations and doing their utmost to optimise the store front for maximum capability and conversion.
From clickers to intelligent cameras
The earliest form of people counting was about as simple as it sounds: a member of staff would manually count customers entering a store. It was time-consuming, inconsistent and obviously difficult to scale across a large store estate. Some stores could justify this time sink by doubling up their manual counter as a greeter, and maybe even tripling up as de-facto security. And there are still certain store networks which continue to carry out this type of people counting practice.
Then came infrared beam counters. These systems could automatically register when someone crossed an entrance, giving retailers their first practical way of collecting consistent footfall data. They were a significant improvement, but had limitations. Groups walking together, prams and people moving in and out of entrances could all create inaccuracies.
Over time, retailers adopted increasingly sophisticated technologies including thermal sensors, stereo cameras, and Wi-Fi tracking. Footfall data became more useful for understanding peak trading periods, staffing requirements, store performance and marketing activity. But there was still a fundamental problem. Knowing how many people entered the store wasn't the same as knowing what they actually did once they were inside.
People counting has evolved into shopper intelligence
In 2026, retailers have an enormous range of people-counting and shopper analytics technologies available to them. Modern systems can measure much more than entrance footfall. Retailers can analyse traffic flows, dwell times, occupancy, shopper profiles and conversion, with increasingly sophisticated computer vision and AI providing much deeper insight into what happens on the shop floor. This is an important shift. The question is no longer simply "How many people came into my store?" Now it is "What did those shoppers do, where did they go, what did they engage with, and how many actually converted into customers?"
Different verticals of retailers will have differing approaches to what insights they want to glean from footfall information. Shopping centres may just want to measure overall/total visits to justify rental figures and marketing spend. Department stores typically want to compare area-traffic with sales. Fashion brands like to understand demographic along with trends and seasonal promotions. Supermarkets need to know foot traffic to assist with staff tasking and replenishments, to align with busy periods, of which there may be two or three per day. High volume retailers with large estates may need to understand footfall for benchmarking and real estate valuations.
Is There A Problem In Using Existing Security Cameras for Shopper Analytics?
At first glance, using a retailer's existing CCTV cameras for shopper analytics sounds like the perfect solution. Cameras are already installed, so why add more hardware? And in some situations, it can work. But retailers should be careful about assuming that a security camera is automatically the right camera for measuring shopper behaviour.
Security cameras were primarily used to monitor security incidents, not to provide accurate retail intelligence. Their position, height, angle, resolution and field of view may be completely unsuitable for measuring footfall, dwell time, shopper journeys or conversion. Camera positioning is one of the biggest factors determining the quality of computer-vision analytics.
There can also be significant variation across a store estate. One location might have modern, high-resolution cameras, while another could be using older equipment with different angles, lighting conditions or coverage. This can make it difficult to produce consistent data across hundreds of stores.
Then there is the IT complexity. Connecting analytics software into an existing CCTV environment can involve working with video management systems, network infrastructure, camera feeds and security teams. What initially looks like a simple software installation can quickly become an IT project.
Is it really possible to implement shopper analytics with minimal fuss?
There are plenty of excellent people-counting and analytics systems available today but for retailers managing hundreds, or in some cases, thousands of physical locations, technology needs to be accurate, auditable, and easy to scale.
VisionR’s smart-camera solution operates simply by using a power source in-store. Shopper data is then immediately captured and delivered to the dashboard. As there are live updates, retail teams can action on their data same-day, rather than waiting for reports to see what monies could have been captured.
The future isn't just counting people. It's understanding what happens after those measured shoppers walk through the door. As VisionR’s platform comes with customised alerts and consultation, there isn’t a need for a store network to have dedicated data scientists. Although enterprise retailers with analytics teams will benefit greatly from having this type of live data merged with their BI platforms.
This is where VisionR takes a different approach. Rather than trying to make an existing security camera do a completely different job, VisionR uses a purpose-built, plug-and-play smart camera designed specifically to capture shopper intelligence.
The objective isn't to replace a retailer's security system. It's to create a dedicated source of accurate, actionable shopper data without turning the deployment into another major technology project. That's where purpose-built technology like VisionR has a compelling advantage.
