04/ 02/ 2002
Last week's Workshop discussed which evenings of the week are the most active for practically every type of retail business. In today's Workshop, contributor Jeffrey Moses discusses the best days of the week for most businesses. This information can be greatly beneficial, because it allows owners to focus resources on the particular days that offer the most sales potential.
Each week is a repeating, seldomly varying cycle in terms of most active days for almost all types of businesses -- including retail stores, restaurants and bars, mall shops, etc. In descending order, with the most active first, these days are:
- Saturday. People aren't at work and it's by far the most active day of the week from a sales standpoint. I always shake my head and wonder when I see a store that's closed on Saturday, because it's missing a big opportunity for drop-in shoppers. Why is Saturday the best day? Simple: People are stocking up after running out of everything during the week. Mothers shop for clothes and groceries, teenagers cruise the malls, homeowners run to the hardware store to pick up what they need for the latest home-improvement project (ever notice that many hardware stores are open only until noon on Saturday?).
- Sunday. Many years ago, this day used to be off-limits to stores because of the general public sentiment that business shouldn't be open on Sundays. It's hard to imagine that forty years ago even Sears stores and most grocery stores were closed on Sundays. But over time it became recognized as a day too good to pass up. One by one different types of stores became open for business on Sunday. (By the way, the first stores to open on Sundays were usually pharmacies. They used the concept that customers should have access to prescriptions every day of the week. That gradually led to the wide spectrum of stores we now see open.)
- Friday (especially Friday afternoon). It's a lot like Saturday. A lot of people have to catch up on shopping after the work week. Also, people are getting ready for the weekend.
- Monday. People have last minute shopping to do before the week sets in.
- Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday are all about the same, although some businesses will see patterns of best days within these three.
What can be learned from this? Simple: stay open on Saturday and Sunday, if possible. If you need to take at least one day off each week, there's probably no single best day to close. It's awkward, for instance, to close on a Wednesday because some shoppers will show up anyway and may be annoyed that you're not open on a "work day."
One more angle on this subject: the best hours of the day for business. (This does not include evening hours, which were addressed last week in Part I of this article.) The best business hours during the day are, in general,8:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. (while people are on their way to work), 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. (during lunch hour), and 4:00 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. (when people are on their way home from work).
As an amusing, but perhaps not surprising, example of an organization that keeps terrible hours from the perspective of customer service, a county government building near where I live is open from 10:00 a.m. to noon and1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. And of course they're closed Saturdays and Sundays.(Who are their hours set for? Certainly not for the taxpaying citizens of the county.) Just as bad, perhaps, is a nearby auto dealership that closes its service department on Saturday, the easiest day for people to take in their cars. Why wouldn't an establishment like that be open both Saturday and Sunday? Their business would certainly increase if they were.
Simply by becoming more aware of the patterns of daily and hourly activity for your own business, you'll learn how to adjust your schedule to increase sales. You'll be surprised at how marked the patterns are, and how repeatable week after week and month after month.
workshops.microbusiness.fri
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