Commentary

Most Stay in Stores 26 Minutes; Not the 5-Minute Shopper

Shoppers are spending more time in stores than last year but overall there are fewer of them.

Based on the tracking of mobile phones in around malls and stores, overall shopper traffic decreased 1% from last year during the month of February.

However, storefront conversions, the number of shoppers who enter a store as a percentage of the people walking by, increased to 9%, slightly up from last year.

The data is from the U.S. Retail Benchmarks study, a monthly report on the tracking of tens of millions of domestic shopping sessions by Euclid.

Shopping session duration, defined as the mean time that most shoppers enter a store until they leave, was 26 minutes, up from 23 minutes per shopping trip last year, according to Euclid.

So the good news for retailers is that most shoppers are spending more time in their stores.

Another positive for merchants is that 12% of shoppers return to a store location more than once in 30 days.

But then there are the five-minute shoppers.

From a mobile commerce standpoint, one of the more interesting insights in the regular reports is how many shoppers who go into a store leave within five minutes.

In the last month, 9% of shoppers fit that bill, around the same as last year.

In essence, about one in 10 shoppers are in a store for fewer than five minutes.

Maybe they know exactly what they want, get it and get out. Or maybe they go to a department or product, do a mobile price comparison and decide to make the purchase elsewhere. Or maybe there is some other reason or many other reasons.

No matter the reason, we know from multiple studies that mobile shoppers are continually looking for deals.

Maybe the five-minute shopper finds them faster than anyone else. Or maybe they don’t find them at all.

So for 10% of the mobile shoppers in a store, a retailer has fewer than five minutes to close the deal.

Are you a five-minute shopper or do you know one?

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