When Do Mobile And PC Shoppers Shop?

By Pete Rizzo (@pete_rizzo_

It’s a simple question with profound implications for online retailers: Just when do mobile and online shoppers go online to buy retail items?

Millward Brown Digital, Lightspeed Research and Kantar set out to answer this question in October 2012, analyzing both the time of day and the day of the week that mobile and PC users were most likely to access online buying destinations. The results provide online and mobile retailers with new data to refine their eCommerce and mobile efforts for the unique needs of each device user.

In this PYMNTS.com Interactive Infographic, we allow you to explore the findings, and examine how consumer retail visitation and device use fluctuate over the course of the average day. Simply select the time of day at the top of our graphic to reveal how many mobile and PC consumers are actively searching for shopping opportunities during this time period.

As illustrated above, PC shopping hit a high of 24 percent from 12 p.m. to 8 p.m., while mobile shoppers tended to be most active in the later part of the afternoon – from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. – and in the evening – from 8 p.m. to 12 p.m.

Although the findings are very intuitive, they are still very informative and may help justify additional ad spend during a certain time or day,” digital marketing specialist Compete wrote in its overview of the research.

Together with the researchers’ data on the days of the week that PC and smartphone shoppers are most likely to shop on, however, the report paints a more vivid picture of how best to target both demographics.

This chart shows that while PC shopping declines over the course of the average week, mobile shopping rises on a rough upward trajectory to a high on Sunday.

For more on how mobile consumers behave by location, read “Tablets, Smartphones Battle For Home Shopping Supremacy” or view Compete’s full summary of the research here.