Storefront entry rate: the number your leasing team doesn't have.

Malls count visitors at the doors. Tenants count sales at the till. Almost nobody counts what happens in between.

A mall knows how many people came through its entrances. Each tenant knows how many receipts it printed. But between those two numbers sits a question neither side can answer: of the people who walked past a store, how many went in?

That share is the storefront entry rate. It's the closest thing a physical store has to the click-through rate an online shop watches every day.

Why it matters

When a tenant's sales are weak, the conversation usually stalls on one question: is it the location or the store? Entry rate splits the two.

• Lots of passers-by, few entries: the corridor is doing its job. The storefront, window display or signage isn't.
• Few passers-by, healthy entry rate: the store converts well but sits on a quiet corridor. That's a traffic and wayfinding question for the mall.
• Both low: the unit may simply be in the wrong place for that tenant.

For a leasing team, that turns a difficult conversation into one built on the same numbers for every tenant.

How it's measured

A camera covering the corridor in front of a row of stores sees both groups: people passing along the corridor, and people crossing the line into each store. Many malls already have corridor cameras placed this way for security. We count both, hour by hour, and divide one by the other.

Reading it fairly

• Compare like with like. Rank stores on the same corridor and the same days. A store next to the main entrance and one at the end of a quiet wing see very different traffic.
• Separate destination stores. Supermarkets and anchor tenants pull people in deliberately, so they lift the average. Look at the floor with and without them.
• Look by hour. An entry rate that drops at a particular time of day often points to something practical: sun on the glass, a closed door, a display blocked by a promotion stand.

Sharing with tenants

Each tenant should only ever see its own storefront, alongside anonymised corridor figures. Used that way, entry rate becomes something the mall can offer tenants, not something it holds over them.