The most daunting part of doing shopper measurement isn’t the analytics, it’s the data collection piece. Nobody likes to put new technology in the store; it’s expensive and it’s a hassle. And most stores feel like they have plenty of crap dangling from their ceilings already.

If you’re in that camp, but would love to have real in-store shopper measurement, there are three technologies you should consider. The first, and the one I’m going to discuss today, is your existing WiFi access points.

Most modern WiFi access points can geo-locate the signals they receive. Now you may be thinking to yourself that the overwhelming majority of shoppers don’t connect to your WiFi. But that’s okay. Phones with their WiFi enabled ping out to your access points on a regular basis even when they don’t connect to your WiFi. And, yes, it’s both possible and acceptable to use that for anonymous measurement.

What that means, is that you can use your store’s WiFi to measure the journeys for a significant percentage of your shoppers. Access point tracking is incredibly convenient. Since it’s based off your existing customer WiFi system, you already have the necessary hardware. If your equipment is modern, it’s usually just a matter of flipping a software switch to get geo-location data in the cloud.

Providers like Meraki have been gradually improving the positional accuracy of the data and they make it super-easy to enable this and get a full data feed. And if you’re equipment is older or from a vendor that doesn’t do that? It’s not a lost cause. Every reasonably modern WiFi Access Point generates a log file that includes the basic data necessary for positional triangulation. It’s not as convenient as the cloud-based feeds that come with the best systems, but if you don’t mind doing a little bit of traditional IT file wrangling, it can work almost as well. We’ll do the heavy lifting on the positioning.

The biggest downside to traditional WiFi measurement has been the lack of useful analytics. Working from the raw feed is very challenging for an enterprise (harder than just installing new devices) and the reporting and analytics you get out of the box from WiFi vendors is…well…about what you’d expect from WiFi vendors. Let’s just say their business isn’t analytics.

That’s where our DM1 platform really makes a huge difference. DM1 is an open, shopper analytics platform. It’s built to ingest ANY detailed, geo-located data stream. It can take data from your mobile app users. It can take data from dedicated measurement video cameras. It can take data from iViu passive network sniffers. Really, any measurement system that creates timestamped shopper/device and x,y coordinates can be easily ingested.

Your existing WiFi Access Point data fits that bill.

Imagine being able to take your WiFi geolocation data and with the flip of switch and no hardware install be able to do full-store pathing:

Full in-store funnels:

Even cooler, because DM1 uses statistical methods to identify Associate devices, we’ll automatically parse that WiFi data to identify shoppers and associates. That lets you track associate presence and intraday STARs for any section of the store. No changes to store operations. No compliance issues. You can even do a path analysis on the shopper journey by salesperson or sales team:

How cool is that!

And remember what I said about other data sources? DM1 can simultaneously ingest your mobile app user data and your WiFi data and let you track each as separate segments. You get the extra detail and positional accuracy for all your mobile shoppers along with the ability to rapidly swap views and see how the broader population of smartphone users is navigating your store.

Coupling DM1 to WiFi geo-location data really is the easiest, cheapest way to give serious, enterprise-class in-store shopper measurement a try.

And the Fine Print

If you’re wondering if there are drawbacks to WiFi measurement, the answer is yes. We see it as a great, no-pain way to get started with shopper analytics. But there are strong reasons why, to get really good measurement, you’ll need to migrate at least some stores to dedicated measurement collection. WiFi’s positional accuracy suffers in comparison to dedicated measurement devices like iViu’s or camera-based solutions. And it also measures fewer shoppers. Even compared to other means of electronic detection, you’ll lose a significant number of phones – especially IOS devices.

If you were reading closely, you’ll remember that I said there were three technologies to consider if you want to do shopper journey measurement without adding in-store hardware. WiFi is the easiest and the most widespread of these. But there are slam-dunk solutions for mobile app measurement that I’ll cover in my next post. And if you have relatively modern security cameras, there’s even a software-based solution that can help you turn that data into grist for the DM1 mill. That’s a solution we’ve been hoping for since day 1 – and it’s finally starting to become a reality.