Conversion when the queue is around the corner
Conversion is a quarrelsome figure because the two machines disagree. A door counter on a windy high street counts the same person twice. A till counts a basket, not the friend who waited outside with the dog. We still use conversion — with a note on which shops have a counter that the manager trusts.
Where there is no trusted counter, we omit conversion for that unit. Borrowing a sister shop’s rate to “complete the table” is how a board starts managing a number that never happened.
Queues are the missing column. A Saturday queue that starts on the pavement means people are already deciding not to enter. That decision never reaches the door counter as a non-conversion; they were never in. Area managers know this. Period packs often do not. A single sentence on the Friday pack — “queue on pavement from 11:40, two tills, third operator in training” — is worth more than a red conversion arrow.
Click-and-collect complicates the door. Collectors enter, often without browsing, and can inflate conversion or deflate it depending on whether collection is ringed as a sale in that shop. Write the rule once. Then stop arguing it every Monday.
If you only add one field this quarter, add “tills open at peak” next to conversion. It is ugly and it is closer to the floor.