Shopping Centre People Counting & Footfall

People counting for shopping centres

People counting for shopping centres measures footfall at every entrance and through key zones, giving centre management one consistent traffic figure for leasing, marketing and operations. CountIQ collects those counts from compatible Axis cameras and reports them by entrance, zone and centre.

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CountIQ weekly activity screen showing day-by-day traffic charts, comparison graphs and trend reporting, the view centre managers use to compare footfall across a week

Why centres count footfall

Evidence for leasing conversations

Traffic by entrance and zone shows retailers and prospects how many people pass through each part of the centre, which is the question every leasing discussion comes back to.

Marketing you can measure

Compare footfall during an event, campaign or school-holiday activation with normal weeks to see what it added.

Operations matched to traffic

Cleaning, security and customer service rosters can follow the hours and entrances that are actually busy.

What to measure

These are the figures centre managers, owners and retailers ask for most often.

Metric	What it tells you	Decision it supports
Entries by entrance	Which doors carry the traffic	Tenancy mix, wayfinding and security cover
Centre footfall by day, week and month	The headline number for owners and retailers	Owner reporting and year-on-year comparison
Zone or precinct counts	How traffic spreads across levels and malls	Leasing and activation placement
Peak hours	When the centre is busiest	Rosters and trading hours
Vehicle counts at car park entries	How many visitors arrive by car	Car park management

How CountIQ counts

Step 1
Count at the entrance
Compatible Axis cameras count people crossing configured entrance and exit lines. Detection and counting run on the camera.
Step 2
Bring every site together
Count data is sent to CountIQ in the cloud, where dashboards show activity and occupancy by site and zone.
Step 3
Alert and report
Set occupancy thresholds, receive alerts and schedule reports so the right people get the numbers without asking.

Read more about how people counting systems work or see the CountIQ people counting software in detail. Planning a purchase? See people counting pricing, Axis camera compatibility and privacy.

How centre teams use it

The monthly owner report

Scheduled reports deliver footfall for each centre on a set day, ready to drop into the owner pack.

A school-holiday activation

Compare traffic in the activation's zone with the same days in previous weeks to show the uplift to the marketing team and the sponsor.

A portfolio view

Review several centres in one dashboard and move from a whole-centre figure down to the entrances and zones behind it.

What to check before you start

Count every public entrance, including car park lifts and travelators, or the centre total will be understated.
Wide mall entrances may need more than one camera or counting line to cover the full width.
Cameras need to be compatible Axis models running AXIS People Counter or AXIS Object Analytics. We check your existing cameras and entrance coverage before you commit.
Agree what footfall means before you report it, for example entries only, and keep that definition the same from year to year.

Common questions

How do shopping centres count footfall?

Cameras or sensors at each entrance count people crossing a line in each direction. The entrance totals are added together to give centre footfall, and can be broken down by entrance, zone and hour.

Can CountIQ count by zone as well as by entrance?

Yes. CountIQ shows activity and occupancy by site and zone. Zones are built from the counting lines configured on your cameras, so zone coverage depends on where cameras are installed.

Do we need new hardware?

If your existing Axis cameras and their placement are compatible, CountIQ can use them for counting without separate people counter sensors. Some entrances may need camera repositioning, additional coverage or network configuration, which we assess before rollout.

How often is the data updated?

Dashboards update as new count data arrives from the cameras. Update frequency depends on the camera integration and the network connection at each site.