Every business owner should pay attention to consumer behaviors on the web in order to maximize the opportunities to capture the right target niche at the right time. Many factors can affect how people use the web, so you should think about when and where you can find those who fit the demographics most interested in your products or services. Of course, this will also leave you room to expand your options once you have become established.

Time of Day

It may help to know when your potential niche is using the web so that you know the most ideal times to find it. For instance, the Pew Research Center found that about 28% of adults on the web use it to look for information about products and services they are thinking about using. You should also keep in mind that a visit to a site that does not result in an immediate sale may result in one later.

For example, you may find that you get visits to your site during certain times of day but not as many sales. Those visitors may be bookmarking and shopping around, so you need to make sure they can access what they need should they come back. You may also find that your busiest times of day depend upon the types of products and/or services you offer.

Demographics

Something you may not have considered is how demographics are tied to time of day in which your niche may find you. A company that primarily targets women may find that Monday afternoon is the busiest time. However, one that targets professionals or those who work jobs that do not include Internet access will wait until late afternoon or early evening to peruse the web and find the products and services they need.

Not only do demographics affect the time of day when some consumers visit your site, but it also may allow you to predict a few aspects of consumer behavior. However, you also need to think about other demographic factors such as income level because this can be related to behaviors such as those who do online research before they go to a physical bricks and mortar store rather than a website in order to make a purchase.

Eye Tracking

Researchers have also used techniques such as eye tracking to look at consumer behavior, so businesses need to learn how to incorporate this type of information into their business plans. This type of information makes it easier to find out what attracts the site visitor’s eye such as pictures with relevant information and what will make him or her stay on your site and eventually make the purchase of a product or service.

Web Page Designs

There are also other factors from eye tracking research business owners should consider is web page design. For instance, how fast or slowly a web page loads matters because consumers are more likely to leave a page that loads too slowly. This means, you should not overload the page with items that will slow it down and make it difficult to navigate. Some users may also rather see article summaries rather than long full articles, so you may consider links.

This leads to other factors such as scrolling because the further down a person has to scroll, the more likely they are to lose interest. If you have several products on a site, you should offer options including multiple pages and a view all for those of different attention spans. These are only a few of the things business owners need to consider to better understand consumer behavior.

Author Bio: Joshua Turner is a writer who creates informative articles in relation to business. In this article, he describes consumer behaviors online and aims to encourage further study with a masters in behavior analysis.