The holiday shopping season couldn’t come soon enough for brick-and-mortar retailers in the US. There may be an economic upturn coming, but small retail businesses in the U.S . have yet to sit
RetailNext Retail Performance Pulse October 2017
According to the October RetailNext Retail Performance Pulse, sales at these retailers were down once again by 10.9 percent. The slowdown was the largest in the last six months for retailers. The drop in sales even outmatched poor numbers in August for brick-and-mortars, when they saw a 9.5 percent drop in sales.
And compared to the same month in 2016, October sales were down 7.5 percent.
It’s not just sales that are tumbling for retailers. Foot traffic continues to decline too. According to the Pulse, foot traffic at retail stores dropped 7.5 percent in October too. Both declines may suggest ecommerce is beginning to eat away at brick-and-mortar sales more consistently.
Conversion Has Risen
Looking for a bright spot or silver lining from this report? The people who do go to retail shops are more likely to purchase something.
Conversion has risen for the fourth month in a row and Shopper Yield spiked with it. Still these numbers weren’t enough to offset the drops in average transaction value. The number of overall transactions dropped from -6.0 percent in September to -7.5 percent in August.
Small Business Deals
Sales and Traffic
October had it’s best numbers early in the month. Both Shopper Yield and Conversion peaked on October 5. Sales and traffic peaked on the following Saturday, October 7. The average transaction value (ATV) had it’s best day right at the beginning of the month and the numbers dropped after that.
The regional data highlighted some disparities. The Midwest led the entire country in sales with the South coming in a close second. Bad numbers in the East and the West skewed the numbers downward and were responsible for the dismal overall showing.
RetailNext, supplies comprehensive in-store analytics for business clients. Their RetailNext Retail Performance Pulse report is an aggregate of millions of retail data points.
Images: RetailNext
I’m part of the reason here. If I know exactly what I want I’ll just see if it’s available online. If it is I can have it shipped right to my house. That’s even easier than going to a nearby store. If I can’t find it online or need it immediately I go to a store and I’m there to buy, not shop.
Growth may be slow. But how much is the existing? It may be because the number of sales is just consistent.
How many retailers and locations are you basing this off of? Why are you aggregating conversion rates? This seems a little like pie-in-the-sky math to me. Conversion rates for retailers vary dramatically between auto sales and apparel or wireless and furniture, for example. Just because you can do something with numbers doesn’t mean you should.