U.S. Retail Benchmarks Show Decline In Store Traffic

By Cheryl Knight, contributing writer

In-store retail analytics company Euclid, has released its U.S. Retail Benchmarks for September. Euclid provides insights from data for brick-and-mortar retailers in the same way web analytics services do for ecommerce companies.

Last month focused on the post-back-to-school shopping period when sales fell. The report states, “Traffic decreased substantially compared to last year and last month. However, healthier economic conditions and less government disruption led to significant improvements in duration and bounce rate compared to last year.”

In August, Euclid’s U.S. Retail Benchmarks showed back-to-school sales helped to boost shopping activity at retailers across the country — not just in back-to-school items, but also in the general merchandise, apparel, furniture and other (GAFO), clothing and accessories, and the general merchandise verticals. In GAFO, sales increased an estimated 3.7 percent, while the clothing and accessories and general merchandise verticals saw an increase of 4.9 and 3.3 percent, respectively.

In September, shopper traffic declined 17 percent compared to the same month last year. The report states storefront conversions had a slight increase year-over-year — Euclid attributes this to higher consumer confidence compared to the period of the government shutdown in 2013.

Euclid also reports that repeat visits had a small increase year-over-year and “rebounded significantly from August, although the improvement was overshadowed by the magnitude of the overall decline in traffic.”