Data Snapshot: Time of Day - Mixpanel
Blog Post

Data Snapshot: Time of Day

Last edited: Jul 12, 2022 Published: May 23, 2013
Mixpanel Team

It’s generally accepted that consumers shift their activity between desktop and mobile/tablet devices over the course of their day, especially during the Monday through Friday work week. But are consumers really putting down their mobile and tablet devices during the workday? (hint: not really)

This Data Snapshot looks at activity from Monday, May 13, 2013 – Friday, May 17, 2013 in the West Coast timezone (PT). The activity is broken down by platform, with Windows and Mac OS X representing desktop and iOS and Android representing mobile and tablet. During this week 53% of actions analyzed by Mixpanel took place on desktop devices and 47% took place on mobile and tablet devices, as shown by the Desktop vs Mobile report on Mixpanel Trends.

This chart shows there is a clear pattern of activity by time of day over the course of the work week. Consumer activity, across both platforms, is lowest in the early morning hours of midnight to 5am. Activity then across spikes from 5am to 9am, with mobile/tablet growing more rapidly in the first portion of this time window and desktop taking over toward the end. From 9am to noon it’s all about desktop with the work day underway.

The afternoon is where things get interesting. The generally accepted point of view is that mobile activity stays low during the work day afternoon of noon to 5pm, then starts to spike up at 5pm, the traditional end to the workday. Our data tells a slightly different story. We see mobile activity hit its lowest point between 2pm to 3pm, then starts to rapidly increase well before the end of the work day. It does hold true that activity on mobile hits its highest point in the evening hours of 7pm to 10pm with the specific activity high points happening at different times during that evening window depending on the day of the week.

It’s also worth noting the difference in consumer activity levels by the day of the week, with the big drop on Friday.

Get the latest from Mixpanel
This field is required.