Are Shoppers Buying on Company Time?

While the internet may allow for shopping twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, the reality is that online consumers do most of their browsing and buying during business hours on weekdays . According to data from the LIVEmark Index released by Coremetrics, the leading provider of hosted Web analytics and precision marketing solutions, leading retail sites received 40% more visits and 53% more purchasing visits on weekdays than they did on weekend days during the month of September. A majority of these weekday visits and purchases occur during daytime hours.

“eCommerce companies seeking to cost effectively reach consumers must pay special attention to the timing of their campaigns. For example, as the LIVEmark Index for September shows, daytime hours are a critical time to reach customers since they are more likely to make purchases—despite the fact that weekdays tend to be a challenging time for marketers to launch targeted campaigns and offer promotions,” said Joe Davis, president and CEO of Coremetrics. “Coremetrics delivers intuitive visualization of online behavior data by the hour for marketers, enabling them to pinpoint when shoppers are most likely to visit, convert, and adjust their promotional strategies appropriately.”

LIVEmark data regarding online traffic points to the importance of daytime hours to marketers wishing to capitalize on consumer browsing behavior. Data collected for the month of September, 2005, revealed that 62% of weekday visits to participating LIVEmark sites occurred during daytime hours, between 8:00 AM and 6:00 PM Central Standard Time (CST). In contrast, only 26% of weekday visits occurred in the evenings between 6:00 PM and midnight CST.

Conversion data revealed that visits during daytime hours on weekdays were 15% more likely to result in a purchase than visits during the evening. Site visits and purchasing visits for leading retailers peaks at mid-day on weekdays, between 1:00 and 2:00 PM CST, making mid-day promotions especially important to product exposure and sales.

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