News

September retail sales fall short

Traffic decreased substantially compared to last year and last month. However, healthier economic conditions and less government disruption led to significant improvements in duration and bounce rate compared to last year.

October 10, 2014

In-store analytics firm Euclid has released its monthly retail benchmarks report to analyze shopper activity and behavior during the month of September. This month’s report measured data from tens of millions of domestic shopping sessions to reveal that shopping activity slumped after the busy back-to-school period in August. Traffic decreased substantially compared to last year and last month. However, healthier economic conditions and less government disruption led to significant improvements in duration and bounce rate compared to last year.

Euclid said that its metrics illustrate a cautious outlook for industry revenues, and estimates sales growth in the following retail verticals of:

• 0.5 percent growth year-over-year in general merchandise, apparel, furniture and other (GAFO) retail sales
• 1.0 percent decline year-over-year in clothing and apparel sales
• 0.4 percent growth year-over-year in general merchandise sales

Here are some of Euclid’s top findings in this month’s report around shopper behavior metrics:

• Shopper traffic declined seventeen percent compared to the same month last year, and nearly the same amount compared to August, due to a significant drop off in shopping after a very busy back-to-school shopping period.
• Storefront conversion was up slightly year-over-year due to higher consumer confidence compared to the period of the government shutdown in 2013.
• Average duration increased twenty percent from last year. Consumers have experienced healthy disposable income growth and are feeling much more confident about the economic outlook than they were during the uncertain times of the shutdown.
• Repeat visits increased slightly year-over-year and rebounded significantly from August, although the improvement was overshadowed by the magnitude of the overall decline in traffic.

The best shopping day of September was Sunday the 7th. Outperformance was experienced across all metrics on the 7th, with especially favorable numbers for storefront conversion, duration, and bounce rate. On the other hand, Monday the 15th was the worst shopping day of the month. Low traffic coupled with abnormally high bounce rates marked this day and likely led to sales underperformance. Generally, weekdays suffered at the expense of weekends during September.