• by Chuck Martin , Staff Writer, February 5, 2014

Winter weather doesn’t appear to be holding shoppers back.

Tracking many millions of pings of smartphones at shopping malls and stores, analytics firm Euclid determined that shopping visits last month to be a bit higher (1.4%) than a year before with shoppers spending more time in stores.

With smartphone penetration in the U.S. at 65%, as we wrote about here yesterday (65% Own a Smartphone, Armed for Commerce), it’s becoming increasingly easier to determine overall patterns of where those phones go.

One of the more interesting stats in these monthly reports is the amount of time shoppers spend in a store and the number of consumers who quickly leave.

In January, the average shopping duration was 23 minutes, an increase of a minute from the same time a year ago.

Some of those shopping trips also involved repeat visits to the same location, though the percentage of that came back within 30 days (14%) were fewer than  year ago (17%).

But not all customers spend a lot of time in stores, according to the study, with some (11%) entering a store and leaving within five minutes, slightly higher than a year ago.

The number of shoppers who entered a store as a percentage of total foot traffic increased to 8%, one percentage point higher than last year.

From a traffic standpoint, the best shopping day of the month was Jan. 4 and the worst was two days later.

The key in the Mobile Shipping Life Cycle is that the in-store aspect of shopping is now just one part, though the part most shoppers gravitate to.

Smartphones can be increasingly better tracked as to where they go, how long they spend there and when they leave.

The other major factor at play here is what the person with the phone is doing. And why.