Over the past few years, shopping centre footfall has fluctuated significantly, especially due to the effects of the coronavirus pandemic. Despite this, January 2020 saw the first annual increase in shopper footfall since 2017 – a sign that shopper’s were beginning to return to the shops after the lockdowns.
With this in mind, let us take a look at the top 5 shopping centres in terms of foot traffic, and their estimated annual footfall.
1. Westfield Stratford City, Stratford
Westfield Stratford City might not be the largest of Westfield’s shopping centres, but it is certainly the busiest, with around 51 million visitors annually.
2. Arndale Centre, Manchester
The Arndale Centre in Manchester is not Intu’s most successful shopping centre, a position scored by the nearby Trafford Centre, however it does rake in its most annual footfall, at around 40 million visitors a year.
3. Westfield London, Shepherd’s Bush
The second entry from Westfield is Westfield London, the flagship shopping centre in Shepherd’s Bush. Westfield London can get an annual footfall of roughly 39 million.
4. Bullring Estate, Birmingham
Bullring Estate might only be the sixth largest shopping centre in the UK based on area, but it is one of the busiest shopping centres, with an estimated 39 million visitors every year.
5. Eldon Square, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne
Despite the nearby Intu Metrocentre in Gateshead having the largest retail area in the UK, Intu Eldon Square has a higher annual footfall at around 36 million visitors per year.
How can this data help your business?
By looking at the rise and fall of shopping centre footfall in the UK, this can give valuable insights into the best time of year to invest in shopping centre advertising. Put simply, the higher the footfall is, the more chance your ad is to be noticed, and thus the more successful it will be.
Looking at the footfall figures for the different shopping centres can also help businesses to determine where they might place their shopping centre adverts. For example, national businesses might prefer to place adverts in the five shopping centres mentioned above, due to their high rate of foot traffic.
However, businesses are not limited to displaying adverts in the five shopping centres mentioned here. Instead, local or regional businesses may gather data of all the shopping centres in their area, and compare the figures, to determine which location will have the most chance of success.
In addition to this, footfall can be a useful piece of data to weigh up against the number of actual purchases. This will give you insight into how successful the campaign has been, and allow you to calculate the return on investment. After all, there is no point spending lots of money on an advertising campaign that is not being noticed or acted upon. In doing so, you will be able to discover elements of the ad that are perhaps less successful, and thus improve the ROI in the future.
Overall, the measurement of how many people visit a shopping centre has a number of useful applications for businesses, allowing them to optimise their out of home advertising, and continue to maximise their ROI.
