• by Chuck Martin , Staff Writer, November 12, 2014

While the holiday shopping forecasts are coming out fast and furiously, some insights may be gleaned from shopping trends compared to last year.

During the last month, more people were near stores, more of them went in and more of them stayed longer, based on the latest in a series of monthly tracking studies.

Shopping traffic in October increased 3% from the same month last year and 18% from the previous month, according to the retail analytics firm Euclid, which measured data on tens of millions of domestic shopping sessions by tracking smartphones near and in stores.

It also appears more people in or near malls and stores are going in.

The number of shoppers who entered a store as a percentage of those passing by reached 10%, up from 8% last year, according to the analysis.

Most shoppers also are spending a bit more time in a store, with the amount of time spent increasing to 23 minutes, up from 22 minutes a year ago.

But that’s not true for all shoppers. The study found that 12% of shoppers leave a store within five minutes, the worst level since November 2013.

In perhaps another indicator that retailers don’t get a lot of chances with mobile shoppers, only 10% of shoppers returned to a store location more than once within a 30-day period, down from 12% last year, according to Euclid.

For shopping trivia buffs, the best shopping day of the month was Sunday, Oct. 19 and the worst was Friday, Oct. 24.

Studies consistently show that mobile shoppers – and all shoppers, for that matter – prefer and plan to make most of their purchases in a physical store.

Some of those in-store purchases will be planned and some are likely to be quick.