Choosing a day and time for your webinar can be more complicated than you’d think. Pick the wrong time—when people are overloaded with work or enjoying a long weekend—and you could get lower attendance numbers than you would otherwise. And failing to keep the time zone in mind for the majority of your audience can also hurt you.
There are a few commonly-accepted best practices for choosing a day and time. For instance, Mondays and Fridays are generally not considered the best days to run a webinar. For audiences in the United States, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays tend to be more successful.
As for time of day, it depends on your audience. If your audience is US-based, it’s often best to pick a time between 11 AM and 2 PM—after the morning rush, but well before the end of the day and possible to squeeze in during a lunch break.
However, the question of the optimal time of day is complicated by time zones—and the habits of your audience. Before picking a time to hold a webinar, it’s best to take stock of where your audience is based. If your audience is broadly spread across time zones or located a number of time zones away from where you are based, you’ll have to take that into account when determining a time.
In addition, different audiences have different habits. If you’re targeting a group of people with nine-to-five jobs, your scheduling strategy will be different than if your audience has a more open daytime schedule.
Do a search online for the best times to run a webinar, and you’ll find plenty of information and survey results. This is all generalized, though, and the information you find may not be applicable to your audience—you have to bear in mind that each company running these polls asks their own audience, which might be very different from yours. Determining the best day and time will require experimentation and careful tracking of your attendance numbers.
If you’re not sure where to start, of course, it’s a good idea to ask—preferably during the registration process. Use your attendee responses to guide your scheduling.
Choosing the right day and time for your next webinar can make a big difference in your attendee numbers. Every audience is different, and while there are a few best practices, the best way to determine an ideal time is often to ask directly. Let this guide your scheduling, and you should be able to pick a day and time that encourages maximum attendance.
