How to Read a Footfall Certificate: Every Number Explained

A certificate is only useful if the people it is meant to convince can read it, so this guide covers exactly how to read a Footfall Certificate — every figure on the page, what it means, and what it deliberately does not claim. Whether you are a landlord presenting the document, a broker fielding a tenant's questions, or a property manager comparing units, by the end of this you will be able to explain any number on the certificate without hedging. That confidence is the point: a figure you can defend line by line is worth far more than a big headline you cannot.

Key takeaways

• The headline total is per-direction footfall over the observed period — always read it alongside its confidence label.
• Peak and quiet hours tell a tenant when the street actually works; the weekday/weekend split reshapes the whole picture.
• Street percentile is a relative rank within the city, best used as a rent-negotiation anchor.
• The range around the estimate is a confidence interval, not a mistake — an honest number has a margin.
• The QR seal makes all of it checkable; a certificate without one is just a claim.

The header: what, where, and when

Every certificate is anchored to three facts printed at the top: the address (this unit, not the neighbourhood), the observation period (the seven days the count covers), and the certificate ID (the string the QR code verifies). Read these first. A footfall number is meaningless without the where and when — "11,000 a day" is a different story in December than in a wet February, and a different story for a doorway than for the whole plaza. The header pins the claim down so nobody can quietly move it later.

Total footfall, per direction

The headline figure is the count of pedestrians who crossed the counting line over the observed period, broken out by direction. Two things to notice:

• It is per direction for a reason. Most streets are lopsided — one way leans toward a transit stop or an anchor store. The split tells a tenant which side of the street their door should face.
• It travels with a confidence label (more on that below). Never quote the total without it; the label is what separates a defensible number from a boast.

Peak hours, quiet hours, and the weekday/weekend split

Averages hide the truth a tenant is buying. The hourly profile shows when the street fills and empties: a lunch spike, an evening commute wave, a dead mid-afternoon. The weekday-versus-weekend split can invert the whole read — an office-core street can be heaving Monday to Friday and a ghost town on Saturday, while a leisure pitch does the opposite. A café operator, a solicitor and a gym each want a different shape, and this section lets them see instantly whether the address matches their trade. For a landlord, that is the section that turns a viewing into a shortlist place.

Street percentile: a relative rank, not a grade

The percentile benchmarks the street against other streets measured in the same city. "80th percentile" means the address is busier than roughly 80 percent of compared streets — a strong, quotable position. Two honesty notes worth making to any tenant who asks:

1. It is relative, not absolute. A high percentile in a small town is not the same raw traffic as a high percentile in a capital, and the certificate does not pretend otherwise.
2. It is a negotiating anchor, not a promise of sales. Traffic is a necessary condition for a good pitch, not a sufficient one — the tenant still has to convert it.

Used honestly, "top 20% street in the city" defends an asking rent far better than a discount does.

The range: reading the confidence interval

If the certificate shows the daily figure as a range — say, an estimate with a lower and upper bound — that range is a confidence interval, and it is a feature, not a flaw. The engine counts every crossing it can see, then projects the observed footage to the full period; the interval expresses how much that projection could reasonably vary given how much was counted. A large, representative observation window yields a tight interval; a thin one yields a wide interval, honestly labelled. Anyone who hands you a single perfectly round footfall number with no range is either lucky or hiding the margin. For the full maths — MAPE, why the interval widens, what it does and does not model — see footfall accuracy, MAPE and confidence intervals.

The confidence label and the "spot reading" guard

Alongside the estimate sits a confidence label — low, medium or high — that reflects how much of the period was actually observed. This is the guard that keeps the product honest:

• A seven-day certificate with broad coverage reads high confidence, and the daily and monthly projections are shown.
• A short clip reads low confidence and is presented as an indicative spot reading — no projected daily figure dressed up as a week, because seconds of footage cannot represent a full day.

If you see "spot reading — footage too short to project a day," that is the system refusing to overclaim. It is exactly the behaviour you want when you are the one whose name is on the certificate. This is a core part of what a defensible certificate must contain.

Method, sampling and limitations

Near the foot of the certificate is the part competitors leave off: a short, plain statement of how the count was produced, how much of each day was observed, and the known limitations (weather on the observed week, a single week's seasonality, any quality flags). A certificate that discloses its own limits is more trustworthy, not less — it means the numbers above have been left honest.

The QR seal: the whole thing, checkable

Finally, the QR code. It opens the public verification page carrying the certificate ID, the method, the sampling window and the error bars. This is what converts an owner-commissioned document into something a counterparty will actually trust — anyone can scan and confirm the certificate is genuine and unedited. A certificate without a working seal is just a nicely typeset claim.

How to read a Footfall Certificate with confidence

Now that you can read every line, you can present one with confidence or check someone else's. Start from the Footfall Certificate guide for the full context, learn to pressure-test a claim in how to audit a footfall claim, and when you want to produce your own, see the pricing page.

Frequently asked questions

What does the street percentile mean? A relative rank against other streets in the same city — "80th percentile" is busier than about 80 percent of them. It is a negotiating anchor, not an absolute score.

Why a range instead of one number? The range is a confidence interval: observed footage is projected to the full period, and the interval shows how much that could vary. Tight means well-observed; wide means less was seen.

What is the confidence label? It reflects how much of the period was observed. Seven days reads high; a short clip reads low and is shown as an indicative spot reading rather than a projected day.

What is the QR code for? It opens the public verification page — ID, method, sampling window, error bars — so anyone can confirm the certificate is genuine and unedited.