Notes for owners · Sales management
Reading your footfall-to-bill ratio: a simple counter for small shops
Count entries, bills and walk-outs for one week to see whether your shop has a traffic problem or a conversion problem, and what to do about each.
The GullySales team · Updated 17 Oct 2026 · 5 min read
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You paid for pamphlets and the shop feels busier. Or the shop feels quieter and you are about to pay for more. Either way you are guessing, because nobody has counted. Your footfall-to-bill ratio is bills divided by the groups that walked in. Count both for one working week, in the same way every day, and the result says whether you have a traffic problem or a conversion problem. They need opposite cures, and advertising to fix a conversion problem is a costly mistake.
The sheet: three marks and one reason
Keep a sheet by the door or the till. Give the job to one person per shift and tell the others why.
| Mark | When to make it | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Entry | A customer or a group steps in | One mark per group, not per head |
| Bill | A sale is billed | Take it from the bill book, not memory |
| Walk-out | They leave without buying | Tick the reason you heard or saw: price, size, colour, comparing, just looking |
Split the sheet into morning and evening, because shops can have different problems in each. Do not count your own staff, delivery people or friends who drop in. Bills and entries will never match exactly: families, repeat visitors and returns blur the picture. You are looking for a pattern, not an audit.
Reading the week
After a week, work out entries a day, bills a day and the ratio. Then compare with an earlier counted week. If you have never counted, this week becomes your baseline, and the first comparison comes next week.
| What moved | What it points to | Where to look first |
|---|---|---|
| Entries fell, ratio steady | Traffic | Board, map listing, opening hours, what changed on the street |
| Entries steady, bills fell | Conversion | Stock gaps, price display, staff behaviour, billing delays |
| Entries rose, bills steady | Conversion after an ad or offer | Whether the offer drew the wrong crowd |
| Both steady, few bills for the crowd | A standing conversion problem | The walk-out reasons, most ticked first |
The walk-out column is the most valuable one. If "size not available" tops it, the cure is buying depth, not marketing. If "comparing price" tops it, show prices and reasons more clearly and teach staff to say what makes the item worth it. For that conversation on the floor, see training staff to sell without pushing.
A week on one sheet, in Indore
This is an invented case. A children's wear shop has just spent on pamphlets and feels the footfall is up. The owner tallies a week anyway. These numbers are illustrative.
| Count | Result |
|---|---|
| Groups entered | 180 |
| Bills made | 54 |
| Walk-outs ticked "size not there" | 41 |
| Walk-outs ticked "comparing price" | 12 |
| Walk-outs ticked "just looking" | 20 |
| Walk-outs with no reason ticked | 53 |
The ratio is 54 out of 180, so three in ten groups buy. The owner asks the staff whether last week was better, and they say it was quieter, but nobody counted then. So the counting goes on for a fortnight. Entries stay near the same level, and the "size" tick leads each day, mostly in toddler racks and frocks for age eight. The shop had been advertising party wear while whole sizes were missing.
The owner reorders the gaps and moves the most-asked sizes to a front rack. The next count shows the same entries and a few more bills, 63 where there had been 54. That is a smaller gain than hoped, because the reorder takes weeks to arrive and ties up cash planned for the festival stock. The pamphlets had not been the problem. The shelf was.
If the problem is traffic
When the ratio holds but fewer people walk in, work outside the shop. Check that the board can be seen from both directions, that the map listing shows the right hours, and that the nearest apartment board still points to you. For street-level options, see increasing footfall in a retail store.
Do not buy more traffic until you know the shop converts. People who enter a shop that loses most of them turn your ad money into wasted visits.
If the problem is conversion
Work inside the shop, using the walk-out reasons as your list.
- Price comparisons: put a card by the item saying why it costs what it does, and let staff offer a second option.
- Stock gaps: reorder the sizes and models that appear most.
- "Just looking": greet within seconds, then give space. Following the customer can raise walk-outs.
- A queue at the counter: add a second billing point at peak.
Change one thing at a time, then count another week. If you alter five things at once you will not know which one worked.
What the tally cannot see
A hand count misses customers who came because of something they saw on your phone, and staff forget to mark entries on a rush day. A shop with a very high share of repeat visits, such as a milk counter, will learn more from its repeat rate than from this ratio. A hand tally is also too crude for a large store with several doors. In a small shop it is accurate enough to show which problem you have.
Print the sheet tonight
Print a plain table and tape it by the till. Brief the staff for five minutes. After the first week, read the walk-out column before the ratio. Other kinds of shop are under retail and shops. If the counts point to a traffic problem and you want local campaigns for it, store footfall campaigns is the service, and tell us what you need is where we start.
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