Foot traffic is one of the most helpful types of data for brick-and-mortar businesses to collect. Tracking how many people enter, where they go and when they leave helps understand customer behavior, assess performance, and optimize store layouts.

Businesses today have a wide array of technologies to choose from to collect foot traffic data. However, this wasn’t always the case. Monitoring foot traffic is an old practice, far outdating digital data itself, and many of its most radical innovations are fairly recent.

Manual Counting

The oldest form of collecting foot traffic information is the same as most data collection forms: manual entry. Mechanical counting tools emerged as early as the nineteenth century, with several inventors seeking patents for simple counting devices in the mid-1800s.

These handheld tools provided a more reliable measurement than counting in your head, but they still rely on manual operation. They’ll only record another count if you press the button. Still, these devices’ simplicity has helped them remain popular today, with stores placing employees with a hand counter by the door to determine occupancy.

Cameras

Foot traffic tracking transitioned to digital data with the advent of digital cameras. Using camera data to monitor people who enter, leave and move around a space removed the need for manual tracking. These records also provide context for foot traffic, not just simple occupancy figures.

Camera data can still be a helpful resource today with the help of machine vision. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, businesses discovered they could monitor social distancing with machine vision algorithms that analyze video footage. Similar systems can analyze this data to determine customer behavior, like how they interact with various displays.  

Infrared Sensors

A more streamlined approach to collecting foot traffic data is with infrared sensors. These systems use an infrared beam to register customer movements, counting each time the beam breaks from someone passing through it. More advanced versions can even determine the direction of travel, showing if someone is entering or exiting.

Infrared data can provide real-time, reliable information, and it’s often affordable to implement. They also don’t capture people’s likeness like cameras do, which helps protect customer privacy. However, it doesn’t provide context by itself, so what you can glean from it is limited compared to some more advanced options.

Thermal Sensors

A similar alternative is to use thermal sensors. Instead of using a simple infrared beam, these devices track heat signals to monitor foot traffic. They register each customer’s heat signature as they pass through an area and provide more context than when they enter and leave.

Temperature readings can show where people gather, indicating high-traffic areas that may need reorganization. Businesses can also use them to monitor for unusually high temperatures that could indicate sickness. They can then recommend health testing, inform people of possible disease exposure, or more.

Smart Beacons

Today’s most advanced foot traffic data collection method is the smart beacon. These devices use wireless signals like Bluetooth or Wi-Fi to connect to people’s smartphones. If businesses have beacons throughout an area, they can learn what products customers look at, how they moved throughout the store, and more, not just their location.

Since beacons connect to phones, they can also connect foot traffic data to people’s browsing history and shopping habits in some circumstances. Given this wealth of information and opportunity, it’s clear why experts predict beaconing to be a $25 billion industry by 2024. However, this data does bring more security and privacy risks that businesses must consider.

Foot Traffic Data Collection Has Come a Long Way

Foot traffic data can be a precious resource to retailers and other businesses. As the tools to gather this information become more complex, its potential keeps expanding. With many of these technologies only gaining mainstream appeal within the last ten years, groundbreaking solutions may have yet to emerge.

Two undoubtedly huge trends have been dominated our news roster this week- augmented reality, and the Internet of Things. It’s becoming ever more apparent that these two fields of technological development are going to shape how we live, work and think in the coming years. In augmented reality, MagicLeap’s imaginative and baffling patent designs gave us a glimpse into what the AR tech of the future might look like; Microsoft got in on the game with their take, HoloLens- and startup Meta announced $23m funding to develop their AR product.

As for the Internet of Things, Google & Biogen teamed up to use wearables to research multiple sclerosis and Onyx unveiled their enterprise-grade encrypted beacon. There are plenty more IoT stories in our weekly picks, including how the IoT is going to change the economy, and how one museum in Cleveland are getting in on the game.

TOP DATACONOMY ARTICLES

How Sensors Will Shape Big Data and the Changing Economy

As we enter 2015, the long hyped Internet of Things is starting to take shape. We’re starting to see intelligent devices, wearables, and connected items that aim to make our lives easier. Guest contributor Josh Ebner from Sharp Sight Labs discusses the possibility of a “trillion sensor world”, and the impact this will have on the global economy.

The Importance of Soft Skills in Data Science

“When I first started working in data, I used to think it was all about the algorithms and tools. Now banging my head against the wall has helped temper some of that. I now see the Data Science role as including at least some management consultancy.”- Peadar Coyle on why soft skills are crucial to data science, and six ways to improve yours.

Making the Most of the Internet of Things

“The number of connected devices related to the Internet of Things is rapidly growing, raising the question of whether enterprises are prepared for IoT. While many enterprises may be overwhelmed by the influx of IoT devices, early adopters are embracing it.”

TOP DATACONOMY NEWS

Netflix Open Sources Tools for Data Analysis on Hadoop – Introduces Surus and ScorePMML

Data science revolutionaries Netflix have announced the onset of a Netflix-OSS project called Surus, through which it will open source some of its Hadoop data analyzing tools based on “internal user defined functions (UDF’s) that have broad adoption across Netflix.”

Latest Company to Tap into Beacon & Mobile App Technology is the Cleveland Museum of Art

The Big Data Analytics sprawl has permeated into the arts. This month, we reported on how beacon technology was being used to overhaul the library experience. Now, The Cleveland Museum of Art are similarly turning to mobile apps and iBeacons to create a more interactive customer experience.

Apache Samza Levels Up to a Top-Level Project; Witnesses Large Scale Adoption

Apache Samza, the distributed stream processing framework, has now graduated to become a Top-Level Project (TLP), the Apache Software Foundation has revealed.

TOP UPCOMING EVENTS

17-20 February, 2015- Strata + Hadoop World Conference, San Jose CA

“Immerse yourself in the world of big data at Strata + Hadoop World. Explore solutions to your most challenging problems, connect with the brightest minds in data, find out what’s new in emerging technologies and Apache Hadoop—and see for yourself what data can do.”

22 – 23 April, 2015 – Apps World Germany

“Apps World; the leading global event series in its 6th year that has grown to be the leading set of events in the app industry is launching a new show in Berlin – the city fast being recognised as a thriving hub for technology and start-ups, this April.”

TOP DATACONOMY JOBS

Sr. Data Engineer (m/f) –NumberFour AG   

“As our Sr. Data Engineer you are responsible for the planning and implementing of scalable, stable and high-performance scoring systems.”

Physicist / Mathematician / Computer Scientist as Data Scientist, Blue Yonder

If you would like to be part of a highly innovative, challenging and extremely future-oriented software market, and a young and highly motivated team, then please send us your detailed application.

Onyx Beacon, a provider of Apple’s iBeacon compatible technology has rolled out a business centric offering that can be deployed at scale, thus requiring better management and security features.

Onyx Beacon claims to have received great feedback from mobile developers about their initial beacon offering which has led to the next step that caters to a broad spectrum of industries; from retail to banking, from event management to home automation.

A beacon broadcasts its identifiers, so that the mobile apps will know what message to deliver once the smartphone is in the vicinity of a beacon. However, when an enterprise is looking at multitudes of deployments, security is of utmost importance.

With the lack of a proper security measure, “anybody with a mobile app” can alter UUID, Major and Minor configurations in the beacons, “effectively hijacking them (the beacons) for their own purposes.”

The encryption in the device uses a combination of AES-128 and MAC (Message Authentication Code), relying on an embedded dedicated hardware coprocessor. A Beacon Management Software carries out the configuration process. This provides a secure way to configure and manage large-scale deployments, avoiding beacon loss to UUID hijacking.

“With the offering of our Beacon Management Software as an API, we provide a unique solution to mobile developers, digital agencies, retailers and other businesses who want to integrate this new technology in their current mobile apps,” explains Onyx Beacon CoFounder, Bogdan Oros.

“Improving security was just the next logical step in our efforts to transform the novelty beacons into commodity devices easy to adopt and deploy,” he added.

Follow @DataconomyMedia

(Image credit: Onyx Beacon)

The Big Data Analytics sprawl has permeated into the arts. This month, we reported on how beacon technology was being used to overhaul the library experience. Now, The Cleveland Museum of Art are similarly turning to mobile apps and iBeacons to create a more interactive customer experience, and gather vital information on how patrons interact with exhibitions.

“This is about seamless ways to get visitors closer to the art,”  explains Jane Alexander the museum’s CIO. The Wall Street Journal reports that with the collected visitor data museum authorities could gain insight on traffic flow and exhibit layout and help guide the creation of future digital content.

In order to make available information regarding 45,000 artworks on smart devices for enthusiasts to access, the museum’s app, ArtLens, triangulates visitors’ locations using information from 230 beacon access points which triggers display data on artworks in the vicinity, providing them with digital content such as video, audio, text, and still images.

Utilizing an image recognition feature artworks tagged with the ArtLens icon can be scanned using smartphones and the app displays information in context to the artwork. The image recognition capabilities work up to a range of 50 feet. “It brings you into the painting so that you can look at it closer” without waiting in line, Ms. Alexander said.

This isn’t the first instance of using technology to enhance interest and footfall towards art appreciation. The Guggenheim Museum in New York is in the early stages of testing beacon technology. “The question right now is coverage, how granular can we get,” CIO Rob Rosenthal says, according to WSJ.

The executive leadership at CMA formulating a framework for data usage. CMA hired Local Projects, which specializes in designing media content for museums, to build ArtLens was Launched in January 2013, and now available on iOS and Android, ArtLens was built with help from Local Projects which has expertise in designing media content for museums. Navizon provided the software correlating the beacons.

Next up for CMA’s venture into Big Data Analytics is deploying ArtLens on wearable devices.

Read more here.

Follow @DataconomyMedia

(Image credit: Artlens, via the Cleveland Museum of Art)