282k+ visitors counted in Wrexham town centre in January – up 16.9% on last year

Footfall in the town centre continued on a high last month – bucking national shopping trends by seeing an increase of over 16% compared to the same period last year!

In 2017 it was announced that an electronic pedestrian / footfall tracker had been installed installed at the corner of Hope Street and Regent Street – between Barclays bank and WH Smith.

This is the first time there has been comparable data for the town’s footfall as there have been complete years worth to compare against.

Figures released at this month’s Town Centre Forum show that footfall between December 31st 2017 and January 27th 2018 was up 16.9% on the previous year.

During the four week period 282,135 visits were recorded – up from the 241,271 in the same period last year.

Data also shows that the busiest day in the month was Saturday 27th January, with 15,319 recorded visits. This can be further broken down to show that the busiest time during that period was at 1pm on Saturday 27th January with footfall of 2,482 – the same day Wrexham played Tranmere Rovers in the big derby game.

Perhaps unsurprisingly the footfall figures between December 31st 2017 and January 27th 2018 was down just over 25% on the previous month – with a huge 470,739 visitors logged in the town during countdown to Christmas.

Alex Jones, Chair of the Town Centre Forum told us he was pleased with the news: “The data gives us something firm to look at, and is great news. We would like to see how we can help get more of the footfall counters installed in various different locations around the town centre.”

“The data is also a useful marketing tool for the town, say for local and national agents looking to re-let properties or get Wrexham back on the map when businesses are looking to expand, because the proof is now there of our increasingly lively town centre.”

The break down of data is the most detailed we have seen , with the weather plotted against average temperature – and even a day by day footfall by hour plot:

The day by day data is also directly compared against previous months, and now as there is enough of an archive, the previous 12 month data as well.

This year on year picture is starting to allow the plotting of direct comparisons:

The below data is comparing the usual quieter January time against a busy Christmassy December, thus the month on month drop – however this year the January was up against 2017’s!

The data dump also benchmarks against the rest of Wales, the High Street Index (a collective set of data) and UK wide data. On those Wrexham is 16.9% up year on year, whereas the benchmarking figures all show negatives ranging from -1.9% to -3.4% – so really Wrexham is around 20% better!

For those wondering how things are tracked – we have previously featured a video on the system being used – you can see that by clicking here….

(Next time we hope to get a copy of the PDF so this can be in glorious colour, rather than hurried snaps from our phones)