Town centre footfall monitoring: measure the high street like a store

Town centre footfall monitoring measures high street footfall by street, stretch and hour, so a business improvement district (BID) or council can compare periods and centres. It uses the Wi-Fi already in the street, plus mobile network data for the catchment. Bumbee Labs is the company behind the only footfall method in Europe approved by a data protection authority.

Which decisions can town centre footfall monitoring support for a BID or a council?

Our BID goes to a renewal ballot. What did the levy deliver?

A BID is renewed on evidence. Give the levy payers a footfall series measured the same way every year, street by street, so the renewal ballot can open with the years side by side and the series can answer members who ask what the levy bought. Comparisons with other centres are explained in benchmarking footfall.

Property owners and the council are asked to fund the centre again. What did they get?

Property owners and the council want to see outcomes when they are asked to pay again, and council investments are judged on them. Give them a per-street footfall series, counted the same way each year, as the basis for the council report and the funding application. The data deliverables show what that report can draw on.

Which streets carry the trade in our BID area, and which are weak?

Footfall per street and stretch, compared across periods, shows which streets carry a town centre’s trade and which stay quiet. Counted on the Wi-Fi already in the street, it can overturn an assumption. Västerås has measured for years and found that its assumed main street was not its busiest: see Västerås Measures Its City Centre.

Did the Christmas lights, the market or the campaign bring people in?

Compare footfall per street before and after the Christmas lights, the market or the campaign, and the BID or council sees what the activity did to the centre and whether the new market worked. The count runs on Wi-Fi, and mobile network data adds the wider catchment; measure event impact covers the method.

Empty units: how do we show the next tenant that the street has people?

Show the next tenant the footfall for the stretch the unit sits on, per hour and across periods, counted like every other street in the town centre. The BID and the landlord then have one figure for the pitch, taken from the footfall / visitor count. The general lease argument is in footfall data for lease negotiations.

When does the evening start, and which streets are still alive after six?

Footfall per street and hour shows when the evening economy starts in a town centre and which streets are still busy after six. Because the curve reads street by street, a BID or council can see where the evening begins and where it fades. See flows and heatmaps.

How do we see the decline before the vacancies arrive?

Read footfall and dwell time per street week by week, and a street that starts to lose visitors can be spotted before its units empty, which gives the BID and the council time to respond. The reasoning is set out in the high-street health check.

Which other questions can the count answer for a town centre?

• Should every shop open late on the same evening, and which evening? Footfall per street and hour shows which evenings people are already in the town centre.
• How do we compare with the next town over? Measured the same way every year, the series supports year-on-year and centre-to-centre comparisons.
• Can cleaning follow the real peaks? The data includes peaks and trends per street for staffing and maintenance.
• How small can a pilot be and still prove the value? Start with one or two streets on the infrastructure already there and add more as the series shows its value.
• Does a higher parking charge or fewer spaces cost the town centre visits? Parking data sits on the same timeline as footfall; see car park occupancy.
• The traders say drivers account for the turnover. Is that true? Footfall shows how many people your own street carries, and the wider debate is covered in pedestrian streets.
• Every member wants to see their own street. Footfall is measured per street and stretch, so each member’s stretch has its own figures.

How does high street footfall data differ from city-wide analytics?

High street footfall data shows how one high street performs: which streets carry the retail and what a campaign did to the centre. City-wide analytics follows how the whole municipality moves: traffic, transit and catchment. That wider picture is covered under city centre footfall.