How the count is made at the entrance
Traffic is counted at the entrance, where retail stores install people counters that use infrared technology and are calibrated to count anyone passing through a designated area in the entrance 1. Retailers usually adjust that area to leave a small passage at both ends for store staff, so staff are not counted, and the counters are usually calibrated to measure above a certain height so that toddlers are not counted 1. Where a store has more than one entrance, the same entrance-level method is what produces the footfall figure at each one 1.
Other sources of footfall data
IAB Europe describes in-store traffic as the number of measurable shoppers in-store, located at various zones including total store, entrance, near screens, shelves, aisles and check-out 23. Store traffic or footfall data can be collected through transaction data, panels, or technology solutions such as sensors, door counters and beacons 23. Passive Wi-Fi can be used to gather anonymised data on customer numbers, dwell time and recurrence, which supports zone-by-zone presence measurement in real time and historically 3.
Keeping staff out of the figure
Staff can also be excluded downstream of the door: anonymised counts derived from existing CCTV cameras store or transmit no footage, and wearable RFID or Bluetooth tags detected by sensors flag staff as staff rather than visitors 4.
These sources set out entrance-level and zone-level counting without specifying how counts from separate doors are reconciled into one store figure.