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What 110 million unique users and 10 billion visits tell us about your venue

By Richard Ellor
29 January 2019
4 min read
What 110 million unique users and 10 billion visits tell us about your venue
Global Dataset-110M Unique Users | 10B Visits | 45k Venues

Physical venue analytics benchmark calculator

Compare your venue footfall, return rates, and recency curves against verified industry benchmarks.

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Based on 45,000 global venues. 75% of shoppers are first-time visitors; 54% of returning shoppers come back within 10 days.

100,000 visitors
5k100k250k500k+
£

Used to model revenue gain from recovered footfall.

Baseline non-return rate
75%

~75,000 visitors never return without automated remarketing.

New vs repeat footfall
75% / 25%

75% first-time vs 25% loyal repeat visitors.

Recency window (<10 days)
54%

54% of repeat visitors return within 10 days of their initial visit.

Average dwell time
48 mins

Average on-site presence tracked via WiFi probe request duration.

Customer visit recency distribution

Time elapsed between repeat visits across Retail & Shopping Centres

Less than 10 days (urgent window)54%
11 to 30 days (warm window)28%
Over 30 days (cold / at-risk)18%

Primary engaged demographic

Identified via verified captive portal login telemetry

Females aged 18-34 (38% of engaged visitors)

Captive portal authentication captures exact age bracket, verified email, and social profile data. This enables automated segmentation to deliver targeted promotional messaging during or immediately after on-site visits.

Data collection confidence:High (10B visits sampled)

Do you know how many people visit your venue on a daily, weekly or monthly basis? Do you know how many of those people are new or repeat visitors? Do you know how frequently your repeat visitors return? Do you know your customer demographics?

If we were talking about your website, chances are you'd be able to answer these questions quite quickly. You'd then use the information to improve the on-site user experience with the aim of reducing bounce, increasing time on page and ultimately driving more conversions.

We track everything online because it's easy - and with free tools like Google Analytics, there's no excuse.

However, when it comes to understanding your physical spaces, things can get a little more complicated.

Point of sale systems are great for understanding transactions in-store but they can't give you a holistic overview of your customers and how they behave.

So, to help businesses answer these questions, we've analysed 110 million unique individuals, across 10 billion visits to 45,000 Purple WiFi enabled venues around the world. We then broke this data down by industry.

I think it is important to mention here that even if you do know the answers to these questions - do you know how your performance compares to that of your peers or the industry average? It's one thing to have a metric that you can measure, what is more difficult to understand is whether that performance is any good, or how well you are serving your audience.

Anyway, here's what we found.

For the purpose of this example, I'm going to focus on retail. If retail isn't relevant for you, you can download a free copy of your industry specific report here.

Return rates

Based on an estimated footfall of 100,000 visitors per month, on average, we found that 75% of your visitors will not return to your venue.

However, when you capture customer data via WiFi analytics, and follow up with tailored marketing campaigns, you can increase your customer return rates quite considerably.

Frequency of visits

As with many brands, customer retention and loyalty is very important. The chart below shows how many customers visit your venue once, twice, right through to 20+ visits.

We have identified that across the retail industry, 27% of people will visit your venue 2-5 times. Being able to identify trends and patterns in this data across your different stores can help you develop strategies to achieve increased retention rates.

Recency

The graph below shows the average length of time between customer visits. We found that across the retail industry, 54% of consumers visit your venue again in less than 10 days. This suggests that loyalty is high amongst the % of customers that do return to your venue.

This data can be used to create a sense of urgency - increasing recency.

We see it all the time, emails that encourage us to make a purchase quickly before a sale ends. More often than not, it's effective.

Being able to capture customer data through WiFi analytics and then market offers or discounts to consumers is an effective strategy that positively impacts recency.

New vs. repeat

On average, in retail, 75% of your customers are new vs. 25% which are repeat. Being able to identify your new vs. repeat visits helps you focus efforts on either driving new business or improving your customer retention depending on your commercial goals.

Most popular demographic

Across the retail industry, we found that the most popular demographic is females aged 18-34.

We appreciate that based on the type of store, demographics are likely to be different across retail, however, the principle remains the same.

Understanding who your most popular demographic is allows you to personalise customer communications which will increase conversion rates and drive spend. You can also use this data to identify less popular demographics you wish to target and tailor marketing efforts to impact this.

To download a copy of our retail report, click here.

Our performance reports provide just a snapshot of the data you can capture and analyse with WiFi analytics.

With a full enterprise licence, you can run up to 6,000 different reports, giving you real, in-depth insights into your physical spaces that can be used to impact business decisions.

Interested? Click here to try Purple for free, or get a demo.

Frequently asked questions

What is the average visitor return rate for physical retail venues?

According to Purple's global study of 110 million unique individuals across 45,000 venues, approximately 75% of first-time visitors do not return to a venue within a month without automated remarketing. Capturing verified customer contacts through WiFi analytics allows venues to run targeted retention campaigns that significantly lift return rates.

What is the 10-day recency window in venue footfall analytics?

Purple's benchmark research shows that 54% of returning retail shoppers revisit a venue within 10 days of their initial visit. This 10-day period represents the most urgent, high-conversion window for sending automated follow-up incentives and promotional reminders via SMS or email.

How do physical venue analytics compare to Google Analytics for websites?

While Google Analytics tracks online pageviews, bounce rates, and session durations, physical venue analytics use WiFi presence probe requests and captive portal logins to measure passerby footfall, bounce dwell (visits under 3 minutes), zone dwell times, new versus repeat visit ratios, and in-store purchase conversion funnels.

What percentage of venue footfall consists of new vs repeat visitors?

Across physical retail environments, an average of 75% of footfall consists of first-time visitors and 25% represents repeat visitors. Understanding this ratio helps venue operators determine whether to allocate budget toward customer acquisition or loyalty retention.

How does captive portal WiFi turn anonymous footfall into first-party CRM data?

When visitors connect to guest WiFi through a branded captive portal, they provide verified contact details (such as email, age bracket, and social profile) under GDPR and CCPA compliant consent. This enriches CRM systems with physical visit frequency, dwell duration, and location history.

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