When revenue falls short of expectations, the first question that splits owners and headquarters is this: "Is the location bad, or is the store failing to pull people in?"
POS data cannot answer it. The POS only records the customers who paid. The people who walked past and never came in, and the ones who came in but didn't buy, are recorded nowhere.
Capture rate = entries ÷ footfall
The capture rate is the share of the footfall passing your store that actually walks in.
- Footfall is the location's baseline — a number the site makes, not the store.
- Entries are the demand the store itself creates — the number your signage, window, entrance, and first display make.
Divide one by the other, and the causes separate.
High footfall but a low capture rate → a store problem. A signal to check the storefront: signage, window, how open the entrance feels, the first display. Low footfall itself → a location problem. A matter for marketing and site strategy.
How to read it
Trends and comparisons matter more than the absolute value. Hour-by-hour and day-of-week changes in the same store, before-and-after a storefront change, and comparisons with nearby stores or same-brand stores are what actually support a decision.
And the capture rate is the first stage of a funnel. Follow it through dwell, pickup, and purchase conversion, and you can see exactly where customers leak out — the bottleneck in store operations.
How to measure it
Until now there were two options: pay people to count by eye, or give up entirely. saai count counts the footfall outside and the customers who walk in from a single camera, delivering the capture rate by period and hour, every day. Footage is never stored — only personal-data-free statistics remain.
- Glossary: Capture Rate
- What happens after entry: saai insight
