As we yawn into a short week following the May Bank Holiday weekend, research reveals that UK consumers love to shop online in the very early hours of the morning on weekends – with the hour between 3 and 4am being the most popular.
The research from PCA Predict, whose address verification service is used by over 11,000 leading ecommerce brands, is based on the volume of transactions its clients receive on an hourly basis to their websites and is taken from its Ecommerce Trends tool.
On the weekend
Data from the tool reveals that, on the weekend, between 3 and 4am witnesses the highest peak in mobile shopping with a staggering 61% of all ecommerce website traffic generated via consumers’ smartphones at this time – making this hour the most popular time for UK consumers to shop on their mobiles
In fact 12am to 6am on weekends records the highest volume of website traffic for consumers browsing for bargains on their mobiles, ranging from 57%-61% of all traffic.
During The Working Week
While the mobile website traffic volume is down overall during the working week, the early morning hours are once again the most popular time for British shoppers to be browsing ecommerce websites on their smartphones.
Surprisingly, UK consumers love to browse ecommerce websites the most at 12-2am and at 4-6am, which accounts for 56% of all website traffic
However, British consumers are most likely to be shopping via desktop during office hours, with the highest volume of traffic during the day recorded from 9am-4pm and lunch time (from 11am-2pm) being the most popular time with 60% of all website traffic
Chris Harle, Chief Operating Officer of PCA Predict explains: “Our research has huge implications for retailers. With UK consumers shopping so early on their mobiles at weekends they are probably quite tired, meaning it’s more likely they’ll make a mistake when manually entering their delivery details from their smartphone. Despite the huge popularity of mobile shopping among consumers, it still suffers from the issue of small screens making it sometimes quite challenging for people to input information correctly.”
Harle adds: “Also, at this late hour, consumers’ patience and concentration levels are probably reduced, meaning that if a mobile checkout experience isn’t perfect, it will likely cost retailers sales. In fact, in a separate piece of research we found that nearly half of consumers told us they would abandon mcommerce purchases if the checkout process is too long. This is why address verification technology can be such a huge help. For the consumer it eliminates their biggest frustration when shopping via a smartphone, inputting incorrect information. Meanwhile for businesses it saves time, money and has a direct impact upon customer conversions.”
