Footfall, dwell time and bounce ratio: the metrics a store manager should read daily
Footfall, dwell time and bounce ratio are the three numbers a store manager should read every day. Footfall counts how many people come in. Dwell time shows how long they stay. Bounce ratio shows how many leave almost at once. Together they explain most of what happens on the floor.
Sales figures tell you what was bought. These three tell you what happened before the sale, or why there was none.
What do footfall, dwell time and bounce ratio mean?
Footfall is the number of visitors who enter the store, usually reported by hour and by day. It is the base for everything else.
Dwell time is how long visitors stay. It can be measured for the whole store or for a single zone, such as the denim wall or the billing counter.
Bounce ratio is the share of visitors who step in and leave quickly, without moving into the floor. A high bounce ratio says something at the entrance, or in the first few metres, is not working.
None of these needs to identify anyone. They are counts and patterns, which is how Sakshi reports them.
Why sales numbers alone mislead
Say a store sells less this week than last week. The possible reasons are very different. Fewer people may have come in. The same number may have come in but stayed a shorter time. Or they may have entered and left at the door.
Each cause needs a different response. A footfall problem points to location, promotion or mall traffic. A dwell problem points to layout and engagement. A bounce problem points to the entrance, window display or the first greeting. Without these metrics, a manager is guessing which one applies.
How a manager can read them each morning
A daily read does not need to take long. Five minutes is enough if the questions are the same each day.
- Footfall by hour. When was the store busiest, and was the team ready for it?
- Dwell time. Is it higher or lower than a typical day for this store?
- Bounce ratio. Did it move at certain hours? Check what was happening at the door then.
- Zones. Which areas were visited, and which were skipped?
Compare against the same weekday, not the day before. A Monday and a Saturday are different days. The point is to spot a change you can explain, not to chase every small swing.
Zone-level reading is where layout decisions get made. If a zone gets little traffic and short dwell, the issue may be where it sits or how it is displayed. Design teams can pair this with their plans, as explained in asking zone performance questions in plain language.
Using the numbers across a chain
For a regional or operations head, the same three metrics make stores comparable. Two stores in the same format can have similar sales and very different dwell. That points to different problems and different fixes.
The data also feeds other work. Hourly footfall is the basis for staffing to real customer patterns. And because the numbers come from cameras you already own, there is no extra hardware to install at each site. Sakshi reports them from existing CCTV, across the more than 10,000 cameras we have turned into data. See the Sakshi section for more.
How to get started
- Agree on definitions. Decide what counts as a visit, and what counts as a quick exit, so every store uses the same terms.
- Collect a baseline. Run for two to four weeks to learn what a normal weekday and weekend look like in each store.
- Set a morning routine. Ask each manager to read footfall, dwell and bounce before the doors open.
- Act on one change at a time. Move a display, adjust the greeting, change a roster. Then watch the numbers.
- Review monthly as a chain. Compare stores in the same format and look at the outliers.