Coresight Research’s 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 October, according to RetailNext. Retail traffic slid 5.5% year over year in October, slightly slower than the 5.7% decline in September.
• The conversion rate (sales transactions as a percentage of traffic) advanced 0.6 percentage points in October, slower than the 1.4-percentage-point growth in September.
• Transaction volume decreased 2.0% in October after increasing 0.1% in September.
• The product return rate was flat in October, the same as the previous month.

Shopper yield (sales divided by traffic) continued a nine-month growth streak, while average transaction value (ATV, sales divided by transactions) declined for the second consecutive month.

• ATV declined 0.3% in October, easing from a 1.3% decline in September.
• Shopper yield grew 3.2% year over year in October, decelerating from the 4.7% growth in September.

[caption id="attachment_99825" align="aligncenter" width="700"] ATV = average transaction value, % Return = percentage of goods returned to stores
Source: RetailNext [/caption]   Data for October showed that performance varied over the course of the four weeks:

• The third week of October performed the best for sales, transactions, conversion rate, shopper yield and ATV.
• The fourth week saw the largest declines in traffic, sales and transactions, particularly in the northeast as powerful wind storms caused power cuts in many parts of the region.
• October 26 performed the best for sales, while November 2 performed the best for traffic and transactions.
• Sales and traffic were the lowest on October 8. CVR and SY were the lowest on October 6.

All regions posted sales and traffic declines in October. The northeast registered the largest year-over-year decline in traffic at 6.9% thanks to the wind storms. The west experienced the lowest decline in traffic at 1.5%. The northeast recorded the largest year-over-year in-store sales decline, down 6.3%, while the west reported the smallest decline, down 1.1% as the region experienced cooler conditions.