We built LightHouse💡, a retail behaviour analytics system that uncovers what truly drives customer decisions by answering critical questions like:
- Are customers slowing down near the storefront? (Speed estimation reveals interest levels.)
- Are they looking at the displays? (Real-time gaze detection tracks attention.)
- How long do they stay near key product zones? (Dwell time analysis measures engagement.)
Your store might be full, but is anyone actually paying attention?
Traditional retail analytics have long been limited to foot traffic counts and basic demographic data. While these numbers can give you an idea of how many people are entering your store, they don’t tell you anything about what’s happening once they’re there. Are they pausing to look at a product? Do they linger in one section? Or are they simply walking by without giving your displays a second glance?
You don’t need more customers, you need more attention.
We built this system to close that gap.
Our goal was clear: Move beyond basic tracking and provide insights that directly impact your business decisions. We wanted to understand customer behaviour on a deeper level, tracking not just movement, but engagement. We integrated advanced technologies like,
- Gaze detection
- Speed estimation and
- Dynamic tracking zones
to give you a full picture of how customers interact with your store.
💡More foot traffic doesn’t always mean more sales. We built something smarter.
In this blog, we’ll show you:
- Why foot traffic counts alone won’t cut it anymore and what’s missing in traditional retail analytics.
- How customer behaviour analysis can reshape your retail strategy, from marketing to layout.
- Real-world examples of how these insights can lead to better business decisions and ultimately, increased sales.
By the end, you'll see how moving from basic tracking to behaviour-driven analytics can not only help you understand your customers better but also make smarter, data-driven decisions that boost your bottom line.
Why Surface-Level Data Falls Short?
Retailers don’t struggle with getting customers in the door. They struggle with what happens next. Foot traffic, ad spend, promotions, these all bring people in, but the real challenge lies in holding attention, sparking interest, and driving conversions. Traditional analytics flood businesses with data but offer little clarity. Numbers on foot traffic, sales, and demographics are useful, but they don’t answer the why behind customer behaviour.
A packed store doesn’t guarantee sales. Beautiful displays don’t always grab attention. And high foot traffic doesn’t automatically mean customers are engaged.
So, what’s missing?
These numbers fail to answer the most critical question: Why are customers behaving the way they do? Without this insight, retailers are left making assumptions, leading to missed opportunities and underwhelming results.
The Real Challenges Retailers Face
1. High Foot Traffic, Low Sales
Foot Traffic ≠ Customer Engagement
It’s a scenario many retailers face. Your store is bustling with activity, yet your sales don’t match the energy in the space. Visitors come and go, but something’s not clicking. This is one of the most glaring issues that traditional foot traffic data fails to capture: the lack of engagement. A store can attract hundreds of visitors daily, but if those visitors aren’t engaging with products or making purchases, those numbers are meaningless.
Imagine an electronics store that tracks a huge volume of foot traffic but still sees low sales. Why? Because while people are simply walking through the aisles, they aren’t stopping to interact with the products. They might be walking in circles, looking around but not engaging with any of the displays. Traditional foot traffic analysis wouldn’t capture this subtle lack of engagement, it would simply report the numbers, leaving the store owners unaware of the root cause.
With a behavior analytics system, one can track how long customers stop in front of products, whether they actually look at the price tags, and whether they linger around high value items or rush past them.
2. Inefficient Store Layouts and Poor Product Placement
A great product in the wrong place is a lost sale.
Every retailer wants to believe their displays are eye-catching and their store layout naturally draws customers in. But here’s the uncomfortable truth: you don’t know what customers are paying attention to unless you measure it.
How often have you walked into a store and felt lost, unsure of where to go or what to look at? Customers want a seamless shopping experience, and that begins with a store layout that guides them intuitively. But how do you know if your layout is optimized? How can you tell if customers are frustrated by narrow aisles, or if your most attractive displays are actually hidden in low-traffic zones? Traditional foot traffic data won’t answer those questions.
A simple heatmap might show areas where people are walking, but it’s only part of the story. For example, high-traffic areas might be congested, causing customers to rush through without stopping to explore. Meanwhile, certain product displays might be in dead zones, areas where customers rarely venture, meaning your most expensive or innovative products are overlooked.
With a behaviour driven analytics, you can track customer movement in real-time, using dynamic tracking zones that reveal how people are navigating the store, where they hesitate, and which products they’re interacting with. By mapping out these behaviours, you can optimise your store’s flow.
3. Poor Understanding of Dwell Time Wastes Sales Potential
Where They Linger, Profits Follow
One of the most overlooked indicators of customer interest is dwell time, i.e, ****how long a customer stays in a particular area of the store. When people linger in one zone, they’re either deeply interested or indecisive, but they’re engaging. Dwell time is a key indicator of engagement, but traditional foot traffic metrics don’t capture this vital aspect of the shopping experience. Without it, you're blind to how customers are interacting with your products.
Are customers rushing through, just picking up what they need and leaving? Or are they slowing down, spending time exploring, and perhaps deciding whether to make a purchase? The latter is a sign of interest, and interest leads to sales.
By measuring dwell time, we can pinpoint which products are getting attention and which are being ignored. If a customer spends a significant amount of time around a particular section but leaves empty handed, there may be an opportunity to improve product messaging, adjust pricing, or offer promotions to convert that interest into a sale. Conversely, if a display is attracting quick, shallow interactions, it could indicate that the products aren’t compelling enough to warrant further engagement.
4. Are Customers Actually Looking?
You’ve spent months designing your product displays, arranging them perfectly to capture attention, and ensuring that they’re placed in high traffic zones. But even if customers walk by your displays, does that mean they’re actually looking at them?
Eyes on the Prize, or Just Passing By?
This is where traditional analytics fall short. Foot traffic data can’t tell you whether customers are simply glancing at your displays, giving them a passing look, or actively engaging with them. And this is critical information. If a display is drawing in a lot of foot traffic but no one is actually paying attention to the products on it, your marketing efforts are essentially wasted.
By tracking where a customer’s eyes are focused, we can understand exactly which products are grabbing attention and which are not. Real-time gaze tracking reveals the subtle cues that traditional methods miss: Does a customer look at a display for 5 seconds and then walk away, or do they pause, engage, and perhaps even pull a product off the shelf?
This type of data is invaluable. It allows retailers to know exactly where to allocate marketing resources, whether that’s redesigning a product display or adjusting your signage to create more engaging visuals. More importantly, it helps you understand customer preferences and priorities in a real, actionable way. You can make data-driven decisions on everything from product placement to advertising strategies, ensuring that your efforts are targeting what actually works, not just what you think might work.
How Our Behaviour Analytics System Elevates Customer Engagement
Why Guess When You Can Know? Smarter Retail Starts with Data
Our Behaviour Analytics System offers insights that go far beyond the basic metrics retailers have relied on for years. This system provides the kind of data that helps you optimise your store, improve customer experience, and drive business growth.
Let’s break down the features and see how each one works for your business.
Understanding Customer Intent Based on Movement Speed
How fast are your customers walking? It might sound trivial, but their pace can reveal a lot. Speed estimation isn’t just about measuring how quickly someone walks, it’s about interpreting that speed to understand what stage of the buying journey they’re in.
Fast Walkers Browse, Slow Walkers Buy.
When a customer moves quickly through a section, it can indicate urgency, they know exactly what they’re looking for. If they slow down, they might be evaluating their options or simply curious. By combining speed with other behavioural data, you can get a sense of whether a customer is just browsing or is on their way to make a purchase.
Why it matters?
Not all customers walk at the same pace, and their speed through the store can tell you a lot about their intentions. The analysis is valuable because it helps differentiate between window-shoppers and serious buyers, allowing you to focus resources and marketing efforts on the sections that have the highest engagement potential. Knowing when and where customers slow down or speed up helps in improving the layout and product placement. It can also inform sales strategies, perhaps customers slow down in a section because they’re unsure about a product, and offering them assistance or special deals can increase conversions. Tracking customer speed helps you fine-tune the store environment for better customer experience and enhanced sales opportunities.
Know What Customers Are Really Focusing On
What’s the one question every retailer wants to answer? Are customers looking at my products? It’s a simple question, but the answer is often elusive. With gaze detection one can see exactly where customers are directing their attention in real-time, offering more than just tracking foot movement. It detects which products or areas customers are engaging with, revealing what truly catches their eye.
See What They See, Sell What They Want
If you see that your high-margin product isn’t attracting attention, it’s a red flag. Similarly, products that customers keep glancing at may indicate better placement. Understanding gaze patterns helps retailers make informed decisions about product placement, display designs, and marketing strategies. For example, if customers are looking at an item but quickly move on, you might need to reconsider its positioning or visibility.
By knowing which areas and products capture attention, you can optimise store layouts for maximum exposure. You can also adjust your marketing tactics, whether that’s better promotional discounts, or redesigning the way you display products. Gaze detection gives you insight into customer desires and tells you what’s working and what’s not. With this information, you can fine-tune your approach to increase customer engagement and, ultimately, drive higher conversion rates.
Dwell Time
Where They Linger, Profits Follow.
Dwell time is the amount of time a customer spends in a particular area of your store. Longer dwell times generally indicate greater interest and engagement, while shorter dwell times can signal that something isn't capturing attention. This feature allows you to track the depth of interaction with products, helping you understand which items or sections are worth investing in.
It’s one thing for a customer to pass by a display; it’s another for them to spend time engaging with it. Dwell time gives you a window into the true engagement levels of different sections. Are customers spending time looking at your promotional displays or rushing through them? Understanding this helps you adjust store design and product placement to make high-traffic areas more enticing and optimize lower-traffic spots for increased interest. With this data, you can identify the areas that need attention and those that are doing well on their own.Underperforming sections can be redesigned or relocated to areas with higher engagement, and you can ensure that high-performing sections stay attractive with fresh product offerings. This helps drive more targeted marketing and sales strategies, ensuring that customers are spending time in the areas that matter most to your business.
Target Your High-Impact Zones with Real-Time Data
Hotspots Shift, So Should Your Strategy.
Dynamic tracking zones allow you to create virtual boundaries within your store to track customer activity in specific areas. Whether it’s a high-margin product section, a newly launched collection, or a promotional area, you can set zones to monitor how much time customers spend within them and how frequently they visit.
This feature lets you focus on areas that matter most to your strategy, be it a promotional section or a high-ticket product area. It gives you an in-depth look at how customers are interacting with these sections. If your tracking zones reveal high engagement in one area but low in another, you can adjust product placement, update promotional strategies, or even rework the store layout to encourage better interaction.
These zones allow you to measure the effectiveness of targeted marketing campaigns and identify underperforming areas in real-time. By optimising your high-priority zones, you can increase visibility for key products and maximise their potential to drive sales. It also enables smarter use of floor space, ensuring that customers are drawn to the areas that will have the highest impact on your revenue.
Bringing It All Together for Smarter Decision Making
When all of the above features, gaze detection, speed estimation, dwell time and dynamic tracking zones work together, they provide a complete view of customer behaviour. This integration helps you understand what they’re doing and how they’re interacting with your store.
Gaze detection tells you what catches attention, while dwell time reveals which sections are engaging. Speed estimation provides insight into engagement levels, and dynamic zones give you a sharper focus on targeted areas. Finally, real-time flow ensures that all this data is actionable on the fly.
This integrated approach allows you to continuously optimise your retail strategy in real-time. Whether it’s adjusting store layout, refining marketing tactics, or improving the overall customer experience, these insights empower you to make decisions that improve engagement, drive sales, and maximise ROI.
Redesign, Refine, Repeat - How Our Behaviour Analytics System Drives Business Success
The current retail business is more competitive than ever. Customers have countless options, both online and offline, and grabbing their attention requires more than eye-catching displays or heavy discounts. Retailers need to understand not just who is entering their stores but why they engage, where they lose interest, and how to turn that interest into sales.
Turn Customer Attention into Revenue
Retailers often assume that more foot traffic equals more sales. But in reality, it’s customer attention that drives purchasing decisions. Our system brings shines light on these invisible cues-where customers stop, what they look at, and how they move through your store.
Imagine knowing exactly which displays catch the eye, which products customers walk past, and where they tend to spend the most time. With this knowledge, you can,
- Redesign store layouts to guide customers naturally to high-margin products.
- Refine product placement based on real engagement rather than guesswork.
- Launch targeted promotions that align with where customers are most attentive.
By turning passive observation into actionable strategy, you're not just filling your store—you’re filling shopping carts.
Smarter Marketing, Bigger Impact
Retail marketing can often feel like throwing darts in the dark. You invest heavily in campaigns, but how do you know if they’re working in-store? Our system bridges the gap between marketing and in-store behaviour by showing exactly how customers respond to promotions, displays, and events.
Here’s how it empowers smarter marketing:
- Measure campaign effectiveness by instantly seeing how well the a new campaign is performing.
- Shift marketing strategies based on live feedback, ensuring you’re always aligned with customer interest.
- Spend marketing dollars where they actually make an impact, thus maximising ROI.
No more guessing. Just clear, measurable results.
Optimise Store Operations for Maximum Efficiency
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Every inch of your store has potential. Yet, many retailers unknowingly waste valuable space and staff resources. Our system doesn’t just track customers—it helps you operate smarter.
- Identify the dead zones. See which areas get little to no attention and repurpose them to drive interest.
- Strategically place employees where engagement is highest to improve service and boost conversions.
- Streamline store layouts by reducing clutter and guide customers through a seamless shopping journey.
This level of operational insight allows for smarter resource allocation, ensuring every square foot of your store contributes to your bottom line.
Future-Proof Your Retail Strategy
Consumer behaviour is constantly evolving. What works today may not work tomorrow. That’s why our system is built to adapt. As trends shift and customer preferences change, your store can stay ahead.
- React instantly to changing customer behavior.
- Test and refine store strategies without the risk of major overhauls.
- Build a strategy that evolves with your customers.
By embedding adaptability into your business model, you’re not just reacting to change you’re leading it.
