A speaker at a Denver conference told me to stop counting heads

I was at a small meetup after the main event, just talking shop with a few people. This older guy who ran a music festival for 20 years said, 'If you only count tickets, you miss the real show.' He meant we should track how long people stay at a booth, not just if they walk by. I started doing that at our last pop-up and saw a big change in how we set things up. Has anyone else tried tracking dwell time instead of just foot traffic?

3 comments

3 Comments

fox.matthew1mo ago

Sounds good in theory but it's still just another number to chase. You can have someone stuck at your booth for ten minutes because they're lost or on their phone.

felixt311mo ago

So what's a better way to measure it, @fox.matthew?

aaronclark1mo ago

Used to think time was the best metric too. Then I saw a guy stand at our spot for ages just waiting for his friend. Quality of the talk matters way more than the clock.