.svg)
Catchment analysis
·
United Kingdom
Retail catchment analysis by postcode and drive time
See which postcodes your visitors come from, how far they travel and how many are local residents, for any UK store, competitor or candidate site.
Get a free analysis of your locations
Up to 5 locations. No cost, no commitment.
We handle your details in line with UK GDPR.
Catchment analysis from Huq shows where the people who visit a UK store come from, by postcode, for any address you choose. Run it on your own stores, on competitors' stores and on units you haven't opened yet. Compare the result with drive-time and travel-time bands, and split local residents from visitors. JD Sports, a UK retailer, got 25% more precise catchment analysis and 18% lower new-store location risk with Huq.
How Huq's catchment analysis works
The overview walks through the whole Huq platform rather than one analysis. For catchment work, keep an eye on the Explore map and its layer list: catchment, travel time and postcodes all sit there. You would switch them on around your own store, a rival's retail park unit or an empty high street shop. Note how an area is saved and added to a Project, because that is how a catchment is tracked week to week.
- Where the catchment and travel-time layers sit on the Explore map
- How visiting traffic differs from people simply passing by
- How to save an area and add it to a Project for weekly tracking
Trusted by 300+ organisations · Data across 35 markets
%201.avif)
What is catchment analysis?
Catchment analysis works out where a store's customers come from and how far they are willing to travel. In UK retail it usually starts with postcodes: which ones send the most visitors, and how that changes with drive time or travel time.
The traditional method is to draw a radius or a drive-time polygon and assume everyone inside it is a potential customer. Huq starts from visits instead. It shows the postcodes visitors actually come from, including the ones who travel further than a radius would allow. That matters on retail parks, where shoppers drive in from miles away, and in town centres, where much of the footfall is workers and day visitors rather than residents.
Retailers use catchment analysis to size new sites, spot overlap between stores before cannibalisation sets in, and target local marketing. Landlords use it to show prospective tenants who a shopping centre really draws.
What's in your catchment analysis
01
Visitor origins by postcode
See which UK postcodes send the most visitors to your store, a competitor's store or a candidate site.
02
Drive-time and travel-time bands
Set travel-time bands around any address and compare them with where visitors actually come from.
03
Residents versus visitors
Split local residents from people visiting the area, so town centre and retail park catchments read correctly.
04
Demographics and geo-spend
Add age, gender and purchasing power, plus geo-spend via Experian, for the UK locations you analyse.
What a catchment analysis shows
These are the three views you'll use most when you build a catchment in Huq.
01
Catchment layer on the Explore map
Pick a store or draw an area, then switch on the catchment layer to see visitor origins by postcode across the surrounding towns.
02
Travel-time bands against real visits
Overlay drive-time or travel-time bands on the catchment layer to compare the area a site ought to serve with the postcodes its visitors really come from.
03
Catchment in the monthly PDF report
Each monthly location report puts the catchment next to footfall trends, dayparts and dwell time, ready to share with property and finance teams.
Catchment analysis for any UK address
Huq covers any address in the UK: high streets, shopping centres, retail parks, competitors' stores and sites you haven't opened yet. No counters, sensors or cameras needed.
Huq manually validates more than 1,000 locations in each of its 35 markets twice a year, and data refreshes weekly.
How it works
Step 1
Tell us your locations
Add up to five addresses in the form. Your own stores, candidate sites or competitors.
Step 2
We run the analysis
Our team maps each location from observed visitor data.
Step 3
We walk you through it
A short call to take you through what the data shows and what it means for you.
Why UK retailers use Huq for catchment analysis
- Huq publishes its accuracy by country: an 18.7% median error in Great Britain against landlord-reported footfall.
- JD Sports, a UK retailer, got 25% more precise catchment analysis and 18% lower new-store location risk.
- Ripon BID saw footfall up 164% year on year.
- Trusted by 300+ organisations across 35 markets, including the global insights, research and location intelligence teams at Nike, Adidas, JD Sports and Samsung.
huq's platform gave us valuable data to support a key decision on potential new sites.
Dan Brogden
National Sales Manager, Puccinos
Who it's for
01
Retail chains of any size
From five-store retailers planning their next site to global brands: choose locations, track store performance and benchmark against competitors.
02
Retail property owners
Show centre performance, support leasing and get the tenant mix right, for landlords, asset managers and brokers.
03
Investors and private equity
Check how retail brands and assets actually perform before you buy, and monitor them after.
Everything Huq measures, in one platform
- Footfall: by week, month and year, with totals, average daily footfall, trends, period-on-period change, and visiting vs passing traffic.
- Residents and visitors.
- Catchment and travel time: catchment by postcodes, plus drive-time and travel-time analysis.
- Demographics and profiling: age, gender and purchasing power.
- Behaviour: visit frequency, dwell time, time of day and dayparts, cross-visitation between up to 10 location pairs, and international visitation for tourism.
- Footfall density and transportation mode.
- Places, brands and industries: points of interest, brand locations and brand analysis, industry performance, shopping centre and retail centre types.
- Geo-spend: spend by volume and category at any UK location, via Experian.
- Tools: the Explore map (draw any area or use layers for travel time, catchment, shopping centres, retail centres, brand locations, industries and postcodes), White Space Analysis, and Projects for monitoring many locations and reporting to stakeholders.
- Delivery: the platform, CSV or Excel exports, monthly PDF location reports, and data feeds as Parquet and CSV files into Amazon S3 or Google Cloud Storage buckets.
- Cadence: data refreshes weekly.
Frequently asked questions
What is a catchment area in retail?
A retail catchment area is the area a store draws its customers from. It is usually described by postcodes and by travel time, for example the postcodes that supply most visits or everyone within a 20-minute drive. Huq measures the catchment from actual visits rather than assuming it from distance alone.
How do you calculate a store's catchment area?
The simple method is a radius or drive-time polygon around the store. A better method starts from where visitors actually come from: see which postcodes send the most visitors, then compare them with travel-time bands. Huq does this for any UK address, including competitors' stores and empty units.
What's the difference between a drive-time catchment and a measured catchment?
A drive-time catchment assumes everyone within a set travel time is a potential customer. A measured catchment shows where visitors really come from. The two often differ: retail parks pull from further away than drive times suggest, while busy high streets can draw mostly workers and visitors rather than residents.
How often is Huq's catchment data updated?
Huq data refreshes weekly. You can watch a catchment change after a competitor opens nearby, a road scheme finishes or you refit a store. Each location also gets a monthly PDF report with catchment, footfall trends against regional and national benchmarks, dayparts and dwell time.
Does Huq cover every UK location?
Huq covers any address in the UK: high streets, shopping centres, retail parks and standalone sites, with no sensors or cameras. It publishes its accuracy by country, with an 18.7% median error in Great Britain against landlord-reported footfall, and manually validates more than 1,000 locations in each of its 35 markets twice a year.
What do I get in the free catchment analysis?
Use the form to tell us which stores or candidate sites you want to look at. Huq will run a free analysis of those locations, including where their visitors come from by postcode, so you can judge the data on places you already know well before you commit to anything.
Questions? Talk to us
Book a demoAbout Huq
Huq is a location intelligence company. We turn anonymised mobile location data into footfall, catchment and visitor insight for any place, so retailers, property owners and local authorities can make decisions on evidence.
See how your locations really perform
Up to 5 locations. No cost, no commitment.