Dive Brief:

• Retailers have said in recent reports that harsh weather has impeded sales, helped only somewhat by Valentine’s Day. There’s confirmation of that in Euclid Analytics monthly retail benchmark report for February: Euclid found that traffic declined 1% year over year and increased 1.4% from January. The firm did find that physical stores benefited from their omnichannel efforts. RetailNext in its monthly performance report also found a 10.4% decrease in sales YOY and a 12.5% decline in store traffic, with the Northeast and South hit hardest by weather-related slowdowns.

• As retailers abandoned the heavy promotions they offered over the holidays, traffic and storefront conversion slowed, Euclid found. The number of shoppers entering a store as a percentage of total foot traffic improved year over year from 8.4% to 8.8% but fell from 9.3% in January. Storefront conversion saw a second month-over-month decline and fell to a six-month low, according to the report.

• Euclid also found that shopping in February shifted to the weekends, particularly Sundays, with Sunday, Feb. 1 the best day of the month, thanks to the Super Bowl and early Valentine’s Day shoppers.

Dive Insight:

Both Euclid’s and RetailNext’s monthly looks at U.S. shopping sessions reveal what retailers already knew to be true — the harsh winter in many parts of the country kept people out of stores, and that Valentine’s Day didn’t help much. Plus, moving away from the heavy discount atmosphere of the holidays was also discouraging, according to Euclid. Still, retailers do have some evidence that their efforts to blur the lines between on and offline shopping is a help.