The Coresight Research US Retail Traffic and In-Store Metrics report reviews year-over-year changes in selected store-based metrics, including sales, traffic and conversion rates.

• US store-based traffic continued to fall in January, according to RetailNext, declining 4% year over year versus December’s 5.2% fall and November’s 6.1% decline.
• The conversion rate (sales transactions as a percentage of traffic) advanced 0.5 percentage points in January, slightly slower than the 0.9-percentage-point increase in December.
• Transaction volume slid 0.9% in January following a 2.7% decline in December.
• The product return rate declined 0.1 percentage points in January after a 0.5-percentage-point decrease in December.
• Shopper yield (sales divided by traffic) continued a 12-month growth streak, increasing 3.5% year over year in January, compared to 4.3% growth in December.
• Average transaction volume (ATV, sales divided by transactions) grew 0.7% in January following 1% growth in December.

[caption id="attachment_103828" align="aligncenter" width="700"] ATV = average transaction value; % return = percentage of goods returned to stores
Source: RetailNext[/caption]   Data for January shows performance remained relatively stable over the four weeks:

• The second week performed slightly better, registering the only positive sales increase in the month in any week as well as the largest increase in ATV and shopper yield.
• January traffic remained relatively stable across the month, declining 3.6%–4.3% each week.
• January 1 performed the best for sales, traffic and ATV, while January 16 and January 29 performed best for conversion rate and shopper yield, respectively.
• Traffic was slowest on January 29, while sales were lowest on January 21. January 5 performed the worst in terms of conversion rate and shopper yield.

All regions posted traffic declines in January. The South experienced the largest traffic decline at 5.6% while the Midwest reported the lowest decline in traffic at 0.3%. The South and Midwest reported sales declines of 3.9% and 0.1% while the Northeast and West reported modest positive sales increase of 0.5% and 0.2%, respectively. The significant traffic and sales decline experienced in the South, came amidst warmer and wetter conditions through the region in January, whereas the positive sales performance in the Northeast came amidst warmer and drier weather.