My last post made the case that investing in store measurement and location analytics is a good move from a career perspective. The reward? Becoming a leader in a discipline that’s poised to grow dramatically. The risk? Ending up with a skill set that isn’t much in demand. For most people, though, risk/reward is only part of the equation. There are people who will expend the years and the effort to become a lawyer even without liking the law – simply on the basis of its economic return. I’m not a fan of that kind of thinking. To me, it undervalues human time and overvalues the impact of incremental prosperity. So my last and most important argument was simple: in-store measurement and location analytics is fun and interesting.

But there’s not a ton of ways you can figure out if in-store measurement is your cup of tea are there?

So I put together another video using our DM1 platform that’s designed to give folks a quick introduction to basic in-store measurement.

It’s a straightforward, short (3 minute) introduction to basic concepts in store-tracking with DM1 – using just the Store Layout tool.

The video walks through three core tasks for in-store measurement: understanding what customer’s do in-store, evaluating how well the store itself performed, and drilling into at least one aspect of performance drivers with a look at Associate interactions.

The first section walks through a series of basic metrics in store location analytics. Starting with where shoppers went, it shows increasingly sophisticated views that cover what drew shoppers into the store, how much time shoppers spend in different areas, and which parts of the store shoppers engaged with most often:

The next section focuses on measures of store efficiency and conversion. It shows how you can track basic conversion metrics, analyze how proximity to the cash-wrap drives impulse conversion, and analyze unsuccessful visits in terms of exit and bounce points.

Going from what to why is probably the hardest task in behavioral analytics. And in the 3^rd section, I do a quick dive into a set of Associate metrics to show how they can help that journey along. Understanding where associates ARE relative to shoppers (this is where the geo-spatial element is critical), when and where Associates create lift, and whether your deployment of Associates is optimized for creating lift can be a powerful part of explaining shopper success.

The whole video is super-quick (just 3 minutes in total) and unlike most of what I’ve done in the past, it doesn’t require audio. There’s a brief audio introduction (about 15 seconds) but for the rest, the screen annotations should give you a pretty good sense of what’s going on if you prefer to view videos in quiet mode.

I know you’re not going to learn in-store measurement in 3 minutes. And this is just a tiny fraction of the analytic capability in a product like DM1. It’s more of an amuse bouche – a little taste –  to see if you find something enjoyable and interesting.

I’m going to be working through a series of videos intended to serve that purpose (and also provide instructional content for new DM1 users). As part of that, I’m working on a broader overview right now that will show-off more of the tools available. Then I’m going to work on building a library of instructional vids for each part of DM1 – from configuring a store to creating and using metadata (like store events) to a deep-dive into funnel-analytics.

I’d love to hear what you think about this initial effort!

Check it out: