General eBusiness Question

I have a general question here. Lets keep it simple and not get into specific businesses. When is the best time to conduct business online? This is referring to traffic and profit. When is the internet busiest: Spring, Fall, or Summer?

 

That question is entirely impossible to answer without getting into specific businesses. Every business has a unique target market. Every target market has unique demographics. Those demographics determine when your audience is most likely to be online... nothing to do with the Internet in general. What you need to do is invest some time in quality market research, then find out when your particular market demographics are, and when your own audience is most likely to be online.

For example, if you're targeting teens, you're probably going to see them online more during summer months when they're out of school. The same would not be true if you were targeting business professionals. Or, if you're selling something like electronics, you might do best during the holiday season. But if you're running a travel site, you'll likely do well in the summer when people tend to take more vacations.

Jenn

 

How can that question be answered without getting into specific businesses? I have an eCommerce store that does great in the fall / winter (because of Christmas holidays) and a poker site that is doing great right now (because of the WSOP gearing up)

If you don't want to get into specific businesses, then the answer to your question is the internet is busiest year-round. There is no busy season.

 

Good advice. Thanks. What about in terms of total people online?
Not at a specific website, but just browsing the internet.

 

Im sure there is some sort of statistic for this.

 

"Total people online" doesn't matter a lick if they're not your market. You might want to say, well after work hours, on weekends, etc. But in reality, that's just about every minute depending on where in the world you're talking about. Are you just interested in english-speaking visitors? Just US visitors? Well that would make a big difference in the stats you're asking about. I have websites that bring in 3 or 4 times the normal traffic on Wednesdays, and I have another one that seems to do phenominally better on Fridays. One of my business-related sites seems to do well on weekday mornings, while my music webzine does better in the evenings. Even the most general sites in the world (think Google for instance) still have target markets that they're trying to reach. So it's still impossible for anyone to give you a real answer to this question w/o knowing more about your business.

Jenn