Fortnightly Digital Edition – July 2025
Isabelle Hease, CEO at Visitor Insights – recently in Retail Destination Fortnightly news – talks us through the five most transformative mobility use cases that every forward-thinking retail destination needs to know.
Mobility data in UK retail has come a long way beyond simple footfall counting and static hex-grid heatmaps. Today’s platforms reveal not just how many people pass by, but who they are, where they linger, when they move, and even why they choose one destination over another. These five cases reveal just what data can tell us…
1. Full-funnel journey mapping
From arrival to checkout and beyond
PATH RECONSTRUCTION: Sequential location pings reveal each shopper’s exact route through entrances, corridors, stores and exits
JOURNEYS ELSEWHERE: Pinpoint where visitors spend their time outside of a retail destination, what other locations do they visits, how frequently and why.
CONVERSION PATH ANALYSIS: Track the precise sequence of stops that lead to a purchase, enabling tailored tenant placement and store layout optimisation.
2. True catchment and white-space analysis
Beyond postal code boundaries
BEHAVOURIAL CATCHMENTS: Map visitors back to home, work or transit nodes, yielding catchment areas that mirror real-world travel patterns
OPPORTUNITY HEATMAPS: Overlay competitor-traffic flows to identify underserved neighbourhoods or potential satellite pop-up locations.
MARKET SHARE TRACKING: Monitor shifts in catchment composition over time, spot emerging local rivals or growth corridors.
3. Tenant performance and leasing intelligence
Data-driven asset management
UNIT-LEVEL BENCHMARKING: Compare hourly footfall, dwell and demographic mix across every store against the wider store portfolio and competitor sites.
SCENARIO MODELLING: Simulate alternative tenant line-ups to forecast lift in visits and dwell, informing leasing and repositioning strategies.
CO-VISITATION ANALYSIS: Reveal which brands customers visit sequentially, powering synergistic tenant pairings that boost overall centre performance.
4. Out-of-home advertising optimisation
Maximise impressions with audience-driven, programmatic
OOH PROGRAMMATIC AUDIENCE TARGETING: Integrate mobility feeds into your
OOH ad-buying platform so digital panels automatically bid for and display the most relevant creative when desired segments (e.g. morning commuters, lunchtime shoppers) are likely to enter the vicinity.
DYNAMIC CREATIVE SWAPPING: Trigger ad swaps on screens – coffee promos for the 8am commuter surge, leisure offers for weekend family clusters— without manual intervention.
DATA-DRIVEN SITE SELECTION AND ATTRIBUTION: Use granular 40m segment footfall, dwell and demographic profiles to select high-impact poster and panel locations. Then correlate local entry spikes and dwell uplifts with your campaign flights to precisely quantify OOH ROI.
PROMOTION ATTRIBUTION: Correlate dwell uplifts and entry spikes with specific campaigns, delivering clear ROI to brands and landlords.
5. Predictive operations and personalisation
Anticipate, don’t react
SURGE FORECASTING: Machine-learning models trained on historic flows predict footfall peaks, enabling proactive staff scheduling and inventory pre-stocking.
TIMED EXPERIENCES: Trigger pop-up events, sampling tours or brand activations exactly when target cohorts (students, families, professionals) are forecast to arrive.
HYPER-PERSONALISED OFFERS: Combine real-time location with past-visit behaviour and demographic profiles to deliver tailored promotions via mobile or on-site displays.
Why detail matters
Retail success today hinges on understanding not just how many visitors arrive, but how they move, why they stay, and when they’re most likely to convert. By harnessing path-to-purchase analytics, dwell-time segmentation, true catchment mapping, real-time OOH integration and predictive foresight, UK retail destinations can hyper-personalise experiences, optimise operations and stay several steps ahead of ever-rising consumer expectations.
Need help implementing data-driven strategies? Contact us for a free consultation on how to harness footfall and demographic analytics for your business.