Our US Monthly 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 May, according to RetailNext. Retail traffic recorded an 8.9% year over year decline in May, steeper than the 5.0% and 7.9% declines in April and March, respectively.
• The conversion rate (CVR, sales transactions as a percentage of traffic) advanced 0.2 percentage points in May following a growth of 0.1 percentage points in April.
• The rate of product returns was flat in May and April.

Average transaction value (ATV, sales divided by transactions) and shopper yield (SY, sales divided by traffic) showed year-over-year gains for the fifth consecutive month. ATV continued a nine-month growth streak.

• ATV grew 4.1% in May following 3.2% and 3.3% growth reported in April and March, respectively.
• SY grew 4.3% year over year in May following a 3.0% and 0.5% increase in April and March, respectively.

[caption id="attachment_91179" align="aligncenter" width="700"] ATV = average transaction value, % Return = percentage of goods returned to stores
Source: RetailNext [/caption] Data for May showed that performance varied over the course of the four weeks:

• The third week of May, leading up to Memorial Day on May 27, performed best for sales, traffic, ATV, CVR and SY compared to the same week last year.
• May 9 performed best for SY, May 10 performed best for CVR and May 11 performed best for sales, traffic and transactions — the days leading up to the Mother’s Day weekend.
• May 28, the day after Memorial Day, reported low performance for traffic, sales and transactions.
• The first week of May had the slowest traffic with a major decrease of 11.8%. Sales and transactions also saw decreases of 9.7% and 10.9%, respectively.

All regions posted sales and traffic declines in May. The northeastern US registered the largest year-over-year decline in traffic at 12.5% since the region experienced cooler and wetter conditions compared to last year. The west experienced the lowest decline in traffic, at 7.5%. The west recorded the largest year-over-year in-store sales decline, down 7.0%, while the south reported the smallest decline, down 3.8% due to warmer and drier weather conditions.