To make effective decisions for your organisation, you need optimum business intelligence and accurate data. People counting systems (including cameras and software) generate invaluable data such as footfall, customer to sales conversion ratios, Marketing Cost per Thousand, and Shoppers per Square Metre (SSM) which can be measured in real-time.
This data can then be used towards your Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) to give you a better understanding of your business and your customers’ behaviour and overall visitor management.
What are the benefits of people counting and footfall visitor systems?
Not only does this increase your security by giving you the ability to monitor and log every individual entering your premises, it can also:
- Calculate your business’s conversion ratio
- Compare your business’s performance across a worldwide network
- Calculate your overall footfall patterns – pinpointing the most popular areas
- Optimise your building layout and staffing levels
- Improve customer service by optimising staff during peak footfall times – reducing overall wait time for customers
How do people counting and footfall camera systems work?
People counting systems use readers to count people as they walk into a facility or zone. Therefore, the system can accurately detect and record the entry, exits, queues and waiting times of people in certain areas. This allows you to detect how long people spend in one place and how often that place was visited.
A people counting system contains:
- Imaging optics
- Sensors
- Signal processing
- Interfacing electronics, with several virtual counting lines which are clarified by you and defined by an operator on a PC
People are counted as they pass each line in a specific direction.
Is a CCTV / people counter hybrid possible?
The people counter software can be integrated with a standard CCTV system to form a highly intelligent, effective detection and alert system. The technology is capable of recognising people, vehicle automatic number plate recognition (ANPR), animals, bags, and even colour, and can also monitor the speed, duration, and direction of any of these things.
For example, the system can monitor the duration that a bag has been left unattended, or can detect different behaviours and set off alarms based on the severity of said behaviour.
How will people counting and footfall camera systems help your organisation?
Here are just a few examples from specific organisations:
The Police:
- Recognises different behaviours and creates an alarm on a user-defined rule. E.g. “person moving from vehicle to vehicle in a car park”
- Compare images of individuals from incoming CCTV video against databases which will send alerts when a positive match occurs
- Track visitors at prisons, police stations or those in custody, for more efficient control
Retail Shops and Outlets:
- To confirm the success of promotional activities by comparing the footfall of customers at certain times.
- Evaluate outside and inside traffic data
- Research how many customers are actually buyers (compare with People Counting data with Cash desk data)
- Reduce labour costs. With knowledge of the customer amount at specific times, weekdays and seasonal periods, the number of employees can be defined
- To find out what the effects are when new competition occurs
Public Facilities:
- Identify attractive public areas, especially within national heritage locations
- Data on new and returning visitors, average visit duration and visit frequency
- What type of people use the facility, and change the facility according to who you want to attract
- To compare the pull of different looks and themes
Festivals:
- Provide crowd control to prevent injury.
- To appraise the effect of changes in exhibition.
- See who is attracted to market and promote accordingly.
People counting and footfall surveillance systems are designed to benefit an array of organisations and businesses. These include: Retail Stores, Shopping Centres, Hotels, Clubs, Tourist Venues, Sporting Facilities, Museums, Libraries, Art Galleries, Universities, Train Stations, Supermarkets, Public Facilities, Airports, Gigs, Festivals, Events, Prisons or Police stations etc.
