You boost your conversion rate by converting more of the shoppers already inside, not by chasing more traffic. Train your staff to open a sale, engage every person who walks in, and add on.
Converting lookers to buyers is the job, not attracting more traffic or building a bigger following.
Did the person who walked in with an interest in your store become a customer? That's the conversion rate, and when I ask retailers what theirs is, they say 90%.
It's never 90%. It's usually 10 or 15%, which means there is far more business already standing on your floor than you understand.
You don't need software to prove this, though systems like DOR and ShopperTrak will count the door against your POS for you. Do it by hand.
Pick a busy hour. Make a hash mark for every person who walks in: mother, father, kid, two buddies, all the same, one mark each. Then count the transactions your register rang in that hour. Divide.
That number is your conversion rate, and the first time you calculate it honestly is usually a rough afternoon.
But here's the flip side, and it's the reason to do it: once you see the real number, you see the opportunity.
Even with less traffic coming through the door, converting more of the people already inside puts you in the same place or better. Here is how to raise your conversion rate without more traffic.
Your online competitors would kill for a visitor who drove to the building.
Only two markers matter after that. Are you converting, and are you adding on? If you're not converting, you don't have a sales process.
If you're not adding on, you don't have a sales process.
And if you've cut staffing so far that shoppers wander a warehouse with nobody to talk to, you know how often that converts. It doesn't.
Count the people walking out empty-handed who came in intending to buy. Every one of them is a sale your floor lost, not a customer the internet took.