It’s long been said that Sunday evenings were the best time to end auctions to get the most buyers looking at your auctions and catch as many last minute bids as possible. According to research by Zanox that’s no longer the case, Monday is the new Sunday!
Zanox point to a more savvy consumer who go window shopping on the high street at the weekend, but wait until they’re back at their computers to snag a bargain. Once they’ve found what they want to buy they then want it at the best price, and it appears they can’t wait to get home from the first day of the working week to fire up their computer and make the purchase.
8pm to 9pm on Monday’s is the hottest time of the week according to the data from 2005 onwards including over $2.5 billion worth of sales in the last year alone.
So what does this mean for eBayers, should we all schedule our auctions to finish on Mondays? Well there’s the old dilemma that the more people who do the less effective the time slot becomes. If there are hundreds of items finishing at the time most people perceive to be the hot hour of the week then canny sellers will look for the second and third best timeslots and target them instead.
If you want to know the best time for you and your products there are two good sources of data. Firstly eBay Marketplace Research will tell you the hot times of week for the most sales, and the times of the week when the highest selling prices are achieved (they may not conincide!). Then for your own particular business if you use Omniture (eBay Traffic Reports) you can determine when you get the most traffic to your eBay shop.
You need to interpret the data carefully to because if you always have your acutions finish at a particular time of the week there’ll naturally be a blip in the figures. If you spread your auctions evenly throughout the whole week you’ll be able to see the highs and lows more easily.
Our thanks to Dan for spotting the research
