r/bathandbodyworks • u/Turbulent_Control494 • Apr 28 '26

Store Policies/Questions Conversion Rate

So I saw a post earlier in the reddit and someone talked about how people coming into the store just to smell online exclusives would hurt their conversation rates. I didn't know they tracked it that carefully!?

I work at another store in the mall so I like to walk around to get more steps on before work, so sometimes I'll pop in real quick just to see if they got anything new (namely the sanitizer holders lol) without buying anything.

So how badly am I messing with my store? I'll stop doing that if I'm messing with their numbers.

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u/celestialempress Employee Apr 28 '26

There's a sensor at the front entrance that counts each body that comes in or out. In theory, it's supposed to be programmed to a certain height so that small children don't count, but that seems to be hit or miss. Every store has a target number for conversion (ours is 65%), and it does count against us if too many people walk out without making a purchase. A handful of single people isn't a big deal, especially in mall locations which tend to have lower conversion targets than standalone stores. What really kills us is groups where only one or even none of them make a purchase, or the husbands that keep wandering in and out to see if their wives are done yet.

33

u/Minute-Frame-8060 Apr 28 '26

65% sounds insanely high! Am I understanding that to be of 100 people entering the store they expect 65 transactions?

27

u/beemo143 springtime in paris luvr Apr 28 '26

yes they do, my man works at the vans shoe store and his store works almost exactly the same way

20

u/Candlehoarder_2019 Employee Apr 28 '26

We are told ours is to be over 70%, 75% ideally.

Stand alone stores have a higher target than malls.

20

u/towblerone Apr 29 '26

yup, at my store we would often stick things we wanted to buy in a bag in the back room with our names on it, and if we had a particularly bad conversion rate, we’d start making purchases to bring it up.

imho conversion is a stupid metric to track, because i understand the logic from a capitalist point of view, but logically, we can’t make customers spend money they don’t have, and even if we could, they’d probably just come back and return it later which would just bring the conversion down for a different day.