Anyone who collects vintage French champagne knows that there is a perfect time for popping the cork and enjoying the sparkling wine to its fullest. Can an analogy be made about the perfect timing of an online auction? Do certain days of the week and times of the day make a difference between having an auction that is bubbling over with bids, or one that just lays there flat?
The objective, obviously, is to have as many interested parties view your item as you can AND have them be online during the critical point of your auction when the competitive bidding starts heating up. This is usually the last 24 hours of an auction.
When are you most likely to have the largest audience for your auction? Well, finding the busiest times is a good starting place. When asked, none of the major auction sites that we spoke to found a significant difference in the amount of traffic through their sites on a day-to-day basis (although eBay said peak times on Monday through Friday were better than on weekends). EBay and Yahoo! Auctions gave strikingly similar answer when asked what the busiest time of day was.
According to Tom Churchill, Senior Producer at Yahoo! Auctions, the bulk of the bidding activity on Yahoo! occurs between 3:00pm and 9:00pm PST (see chart at http://www.auctionbytes.com/yahoo_chart.html). Kevin Pursglove of eBay cited late afternoon and early evening (PST), Monday through Friday, as eBay's busiest time, between approximately 4:30pm and 8:30pm PST.
Pursglove cited anecdotal evidence that preference for ending an auction varied widely among it users. "A customer support person told me last week that she knows of someone who will only end their auctions in the early morning hours. It really seems to be personal preference."
Amazon.com Auctions, when asked about heaviest traffic times for their auction site, would not release any figures.
AuctionBytes.com decided to put the question to the sellers themselves. In a recent AuctionBytes.com poll, Sunday was chosen far and away as the most popular day to end an auction, with 41% of the votes cast. Saturday was a distant second with 18% and Monday came in third with 15%. In a follow-up poll, the favored time of day to end an auction was between 9pm and midnight (54% of the votes). 6pm to 9pm came in a very respectable second place with 42%. You can see all the voting results at http://www.auctionbytes.com.
Many people peruse the auctions that are closing (on eBay, the Going, going, gone category) and may get involved in an auction that they hadn't followed at all during its early stages. Yahoo! Auctions tracks their auctions closely, and finds that 50% of all bids are placed within the last 1-1/2 days of an auction's life. Often, the price of an item can double, triple or more in the final hours of a hot auction!
What are your feelings about the best time to end an auction? AuctionBytes.com wants to know. Email ina@auctionbytes.com and tell us why you feel one day is better than another to obtain the best results for your auction
