Capture rate
Capture rate is the percentage of people walking past the store who actually come in — a sample of external footfall converted into store entries.
The capture rate is the percentage of people walking past your store who actually come in. It’s the conversion step before any in-store conversion — turning outside footfall into customers on the floor.
How it’s calculated
Capture rate = Store entries / (Store entries + Passers-by) × 100
Both inputs come from the same camera at the entrance — one counts who came in, the other counts who walked past without entering.
Worked example
- A store sees 2,500 entries in a day.
- The same entrance camera counts 7,500 passers-by during opening hours.
- Capture rate = 2,500 / (2,500 + 7,500) = 25%.
A quarter of the people walking past the door stepped inside.
Why it matters
Capture rate measures the front-window pull of your store — branding, signage, visual merchandising, weather, time of day. When it changes, it almost always points to something outside the store, not in-store conversion.
- A new window display goes up → capture rate rises before any sales metric reacts.
- A high-street neighbour shuts → passers-by drop and capture rate moves with them.
- Two stores with the same conversion rate but different capture rates are competing for very different volumes of attention.