Capture rate is footfall ÷ passers-by, expressed as a percentage. If 1,000 people walk past a store in a day and 250 come in, the capture rate is 25%. It measures how well a storefront turns available demand into visits, and it isolates the part of performance the retailer controls at the door: the window, the signage, the entrance, the lighting, the first impression.
The value of capture rate is that it explains footfall. A store whose footfall drops 15% in a week has either lost passers-by, lost capture rate, or both, and the response is different in each case. Fewer passers-by points to the location: a closed anchor store, roadworks, a change to the car park, a rival centre. A lower capture rate points to the frontage: a tired window, a blocked entrance, a promotion that ended. Without passer-by counts the two are indistinguishable, and a store manager can be blamed for a problem the landlord owns, or the other way round.
Typical capture rates vary widely by format and location. A destination store on a retail park captures a high share of the people who arrive, because most of them came for it; a fashion store on a busy high street or mall concourse captures a far smaller share of a much larger flow. The useful comparisons are therefore within a store over time, between similar stores in an estate, and before and after a change to the frontage.
Capture rate also makes window and display trials measurable. Two windows can be compared over matched periods, and the result is a percentage rather than an opinion.
Glimpse reports capture rate by entrance and by store. Footfall is measured from the door camera and passers-by from either a camera with a view of the street or a Glimpse Sensor mounted above the entrance.