When we are consulting with our customers and helping them decide which people counter best meets their needs, we often here the question that goes something like, ‘why would I want to spend extra money in order to know how many people came in each and every hour?’. 

Sure, you could spend less money and buy a simple stand-alone people counter.   And the stand-alone people counter will work quite well if all you need to know is how many people visited for the entire day, or entire week, or entire month.  You just let the counter continue to collect data – then walk to it every day, or every week, or every month – and write down the information.

Well that works as long as someone remembers to collect the data — or as long as someone remembers to reset the people counter after collecting the data — or as long as someone doesn’t accidentally reset the counter before the information is collected.

But what if you need to know the hourly data?  Then someone needs to walk to the people counter every hour. 

Or what if you are collecting daily traffic data only — then start to wonder if it is busier in the morning — or busier in the afternoon?

That is when our Count Recorder and DataMaster people counting products become very valuable.

Because these counting products automatically collect and store the traffic data in hourly, daily, weekly and monthly increments – you never have to wonder if someone remembered to collect the data – or rely on someone to reset the counter – or worry that someone could easily erase the counts.

And when you need to drill-down to further analyze the data to make better business decision – the detail that you need will be available.

But that brings us back to the original question ‘why would you want to collect hourly counts?’.

·         Hourly counts allow you to provide accurate visitor counts and help justify funding measures or changes in your operation.

·         Hourly counts help you determine if you need to modify the hours and days you are in operation.

·         Hourly counts will guide your staffing decisions by helping you track the times and days that are busiest.  Sometimes a hour change in scheduling can yield enormous results. If you think your peak traffic time is from 3:00 PM to 5:00 PM but a traffic count suggests that it is really from 2:00 PM to 4:00 PM you could be missing that hour right at the beginning as well as overpaying for labor on the back end.

·         Hourly counts help control overhead costs. For example; running air conditioning at peak traffic times, and to plan staffing levels. Of course, keeping operating costs in check is good news for everyone.

·         Hourly counts help determine staffing levels for maintenance, security, and other service personnel throughout the facility to address the changing traffic patterns.

·         Hourly counts help evaluate the performance of marketing campaigns and promotional activities that focus on specific hours.

·         Hourly counts help establish performance benchmarks and measure against those benchmarks.

·         Hourly counts help improve the visitor experience by allocating more staff at busy times.

·         Hourly counts help reduce costs by cutting staff at quiet times.

·         Hourly counts enable you to plan maintenance to occur during quiet times.

·         Hourly counts help you understand which doors visitors enter most/least frequently and at what times during the day.

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