When we think of ‘Mondays’, first thoughts may be that it’s perhaps not a favourite day of the week, but our research shows that it’s the most popular day of the week to purchase a hotel gift experience, as you can see in the graph below, based on gift voucher sales from around 300 luxury hotels in 2018.
Our data reveals some helpful online shopping trends:
– Monday brings in the most sales with 17% of sales made on this day, followed by Friday.
– Saturdays and Sundays account for 11% of sales of each day.
– The prime online shopping hours are between 11am – 1pm.
WHY MONDAYS?
Just what is about Mondays that turn people to shop online? What is behind ‘Monday’ that can help us understand why people part with more of their money on this day of the week?
BLUE MONDAYS
People expect Mondays to be lousy and are hunting for a ‘high’ that will lift their spirits.
Simply put – ‘gifting’ (both the buying and the giving) makes us feel good!
In a study by researchers at the University of Sydney, Australia, people were asked how they were feeling, once a day, for seven days. Then on the eighth day, they were asked how they remembered feeling on each day of the previous week. Although there wasn’t much difference in actual moods reported from day to day, people remembered hitting a low point on Monday. This suggests that their memories were biased by their beliefs. They expected Mondays to be miserable.
For many people, Monday means time to get back to the workday grind. And it looks like retail therapy is often the remedy buyers use to cope with a blue Monday – a light way to ease back into the week, making themselves feel good.
FRESH INSPIRATION
Monday is a day of new beginnings. A chance to collect your thoughts, make those ‘to do’ lists and plan to get things done. And with weekends often spent seeing family and friends, Monday is likely to be the day people focus on presents, having inspiration & ideas from their two day break.
People move across devices and channels as they research in one and buy in another. People tend to spend less time on their computers over their weekend (spending more time instead on their smartphones!), but when they get to the office on Monday, they are on their desktop computer – ready to… shop!
This is backed by stats, that reveal more people browse on a gift voucher website via a mobile device, but actually are more likely to buy using their desktop computer.
January – December 2018
Sessions
Desktop 47.37% | Mobile 39.45% | Tablet 13.19%
Conversions
Desktop 66.91% | Mobile 21.32% | Tablet 11.77%
MONDAY OFFERS
During the holiday season, online shopping on Mondays is especially tempting, with retailers promoting sales for Cyber Monday, Manic Monday and such like. So it’s a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy: retailers know that people are shopping on a Monday, so they further entice them to buy with variety of offers, such as time limiting promotional codes. And people shop on Mondays, because that’s when they’re seeing and can action an offer in their email ‘in’ box.
IN CONCLUSION
Being aware of the ‘day of the week data’ can help empower our clients to make informed choices about the best day to run their marketing campaigns, helping optimise their gift voucher sales.