Peak time for online shopping [BT broadband office]

Peak time for online shopping

Posted 6 August 2007 at 8:30AM by Simon Dickson in Doing business online

There's never a good time to take down your website, particularly if you're in online retailing. Time is money, and part of the attraction is the round-the-clock availability. But sometimes it's inevitable: for example, when you're changing your product lineup. And in the case of Apple, for example, each time their online store closes for maintenance, it sends the technology blogs into a frenzy: what new products are they launching?

When is a good time to take it down? I've done my fair share of 2am switchovers, which are no fun for anyone. So how about a Monday evening - with millions of Brits switching from the early Coronation Street, over to EastEnders, and back to Corrie? I mean, what ever happens on a Monday evening?

Wrong. Apparently, Monday evening between 8 and 9pm is the worst possible time - a study by e-commerce specialists zanox, reviewing data over the last two and a half years, suggests it's actually the busiest time for online retailing. 'Consumers are researching their purchases on the country's high streets at the weekend and then buying them online on a Monday night,' says zanox's Paul Coggins. 'These online shopping stats show Britain is washing its hands of the soaps and is looking to the internet.'

I'm not so sure. I wonder if it's the nation's men refusing to sit through an hour and a half of soap with their partners, and firing up the PC to keep them occupied. I've certainly been there...

Tags: apple, coronation street, eastenders, ecommerce transactions, online shopping, zanox

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Comments

1. At August 6, 2007 1:24 PM, Robert Currie wrote:

I tend to find that most people sit down at home to do their email and internet after their dinner, round about 7 - 9 at night, so from my experience I would agree with these findings.

Certainly we'd all like to avoid being up at the small hours uploading, but from a business point of view it seems the best solution. Any other time and you do run the risk of losing customers. I wouldn't want to lose customers for the sake of an early night!

2. At August 7, 2007 1:58 PM, heart attack wrote:

I wouldn't want to lose an early night for the sake of a customer!!

3. At August 7, 2007 3:21 PM, Anjanesh wrote:

Ditto . I would trade in sleep for customer traffic anytime. If I was looking for fun and a 2am changeover ; I would be on some other job.On second thoughts, it might be fun.

4. At August 8, 2007 4:17 PM, Martin MacKinnon wrote:

It depends on who the customers where. Sleep is a very nice thing but for just simple things that I could do perhaps early in the morning I would just wait to do the update. I'm sure coming in 5-10 minutes early might be more effective.

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