Visit frequency is how often a customer comes back, expressed as visits per week, per month or per year. For a single customer it is a habit; across the shop it is an average that says a lot about the trade. A cafe near offices sees its regulars four or five times a week. A greengrocer sees them two or three times. A bakery sees them weekly, a butcher fortnightly, a gift shop perhaps once a month or less.
It matters most when setting a loyalty card, because the right target is not a fixed number. It is visit frequency multiplied by how long the card should take to fill. A card that takes an ordinary regular six to eight weeks keeps the reward in sight without handing it out so often that it stops feeling like one.
In practice
A pet shop owner wants to set a target but is not sure how often people really come. Rather than guess, staff pick 20 customers they would call regulars and note each of their visits over four weeks. The 20 people make 54 visits between them, an average of 2.7 visits in four weeks, or about 0.68 a week.
At that rate, a card meant to fill in about seven weeks needs 0.68 times 7, or roughly 4.7 stamps. The owner rounds up to five, one per visit, with a free bag of treats up to $15 as the reward. A twelve-stamp card would have taken those regulars more than four months to fill, and most would have lost interest well before.
Frequency also changes with the seasons. A car wash sees regulars weekly through a dry summer and barely at all in a wet winter, so the target should suit the average across the year rather than the busiest month.
In Counter Club
The target is set on the Loyalty card page, anywhere from 2 to 50 stamps. The Members page does not show visit dates, so measure frequency with a tally at the till, as above, before choosing. See setting the card.