The internet rocked retail to its core. Big institutions found themselves unable to compete on price and convenience with sites like Amazon and eBay. One by one titans fell, from Radioshack to Sears to Circuit City. It’s not all dire straits, as the internet has also brought with it a bountiful new advantage to real-world business:  analytics.

Soon stores and other physical spaces will use analytics for everything from customer relationships to staffing, driven by data rather than tradition.

#10 Optimize Shopping Mall Foot Traffic

Track customers as they move from store to store, and identify traffic flow patterns between stores. Determine if some entrances restrict customers’ perception of choice. Present new layouts for kiosks and direct people with Calls to Action throughout the Mall. Test everything with data gathered and repeat the whole process.

#9 Healthcare Internal Auditing

Monitor each network in a healthcare facility and store how long devices connected. Auditing is as simple as changing a date range in a database. Use it to optimize power consumption and prove critical machine up-time for insurance purposes.

#8 Manage Restaurant Staffing and Procurement

Managing a chain of Restaurants means allocating resources to multiple locations which may have completely different traffic and peak times. Take the guess-work out using location analytics. Determine exact foot traffic counts and dwell time of restaurant goers, as well as counting repeat visitors. Use a holistic picture of Restaurant traffic to inform management on a per-location basis.

#7 Reduce Universities’ IT Budget

College campuses have massively complicated IT infrastructure, with a lot of resources going to waste. Track foot traffic patterns and peak times to spend on resources where they’re needed, when they’re needed.

#6 Sports Arenas That Find Food for You

Stadiums usher thousands of people through tightly defined sections. Location analytics can track and analyze how people move between seating sections and how long they stay in concession and merchandise areas. Event planners can identify areas where foot traffic is too dense or identify areas that don’t have enough traffic flow. Concession and signage can be adjusted to where people are going and direct them to where they need to be.

#5 Improve Retail Layouts

Retail locations are identifying which parts of a store are most or least visited at what times of the day and by which type of customer.  Knowing whether the current layout is encouraging new visitors into the back area of the store or is only encouraging repeat visitors into that area is helping stores improve their layout.  Location analytics is being used to improve a customers buying experience which ultimately improves sales.

#4 Convention Centers that Track Event Popularity

Understanding how guests flow through a space is very important to conference planning, which is why location analytics is so relevant to conferences. Learn which talks were the most popular, and which events attracted the most people or caused them to stay the longest. Plot attendee behavior in year-over-year charts to see where engagement needs to be improved.

#3 Organize Fair Grounds

Fairs present a unique challenge to organizers. Many vendors are spread over a huge area, each wanting as many visitors as possible walking past their space. Divvying up the pie is much easier with numbers and heat maps to show where people walk and how many of them are there. Identify hot spots where people put up their feet and add ATMs. Reroute confusing corners with signage and advertisement. Put a dollar amount to the flow of visitors in key areas for vendors vying for attention.

#2 Smart Equipment at Public Gyms

Location analytics will be a blessing to Gym Managers for the simple reason that they can accurately track machine usage. With pinpoint tracking, users can be tied to the machine that they are using and the duration that they use it. Put a number on the treadmill marathoners and the bench press behemoths while keeping all data anonymous. The usage information is invaluable for tracking customers’ preferences over time and offering new experiences that people want.

#1 Spot Freeloaders at Coffee Shops

It’s easy to see why coffee shops would be interested in tracking how people use their space. Starbucks pioneered the open space concept, and many other coffee shops around the world have followed suit. Managers have to balance providing an open, welcome space while prioritizing paying customers. So how many people are buying coffee and checking email versus telecommuting and sipping out of a thermos they brought from home?  Coffee shops can anonymously check dwell time and usage reports by adding location analytics integrated with the coffee shop network equipment while still respecting their customers privacy.

Looking to get Location Analytics set up at your business? We can help.