The new beacon-based application allows retailers to not only accurately count, observe and measure the paths of shoppers and associates, but also determine when shopper-associate interactions occur, how often, in what duration and the affect on conversion and other key performance indicators. Retailers can integrate this hardware-agnostic RetailNext solution regardless of their existing traffic counting technology and infrastructure.

"RetailNext was created to help retailers better understand and improve the in-store shopping experience," said Marc Dietz , chief marketing officer at RetailNext. "This enhanced ability to analyze the movement patterns of both shoppers and sales associates allows retailers to transform the in-store experience with better customer engagement, more relevant sales associate training, optimized store layouts and more."

Highly accurate traffic counting solutions require advanced technologies to accommodate entrance and ceiling configurations, sunlight and reflections, employees and their movements, and a great many other variables, and they empower retailers to more accurately determine the correct balance of labor investment and customer service levels, and ensure staffing is aligned with traffic patterns not only by store, but by day of week and by hour of day as well.

RetailNext had previously pioneered the use of patented Wi-Fi and video analytics solutions to exclude employee movement for accurate traffic counting and advanced shopper-associate interaction analyses. The new platform expansion now integrates smaller, less expensive Bluetooth 4.0 Low Energy (BLE) beacons, allowing retailers to deploy exclusion solutions at a much larger scale.

“RetailNext is committed to providing our customers choice and flexibility amidst a rapidly changing hardware technology market,” added Dietz. “Our future-proof, hardware-agnostic approach protects our customers’ investments in in-store analytics and has allowed the RetailNext platform to emerge as the de facto industry standard.”