While search engine marketers have long understood that site visitors are more likely to convert to buyers during certain periods of the day, a new study has been released that shows their timing may have been off by just a bit. The study, released by aQuantive's Atlas Institute showed that lunch and after dinner hours are the best converters. In fact, mid-day visit conversions are about 35% higher than all-day averages.

"During the lunchtime hours and the evening hours, people are more responsive and that's when they convert," Young-Bean Song, director of analytics at Atlas, told ClickZ News in their coverage of the study.

That said, it's still wise to consider whether the time and effort involved in dayparting is going to result in enough of a sales increase to make the investment worthwhile. Large companies spending significant amounts of money on pay-per-click campaigns may find that dayparting is a vital part of their search marketing strategy, but some smaller businesses may end up spending more on the extra management than they gain through the increase in sales.

Then again, our small business readers may also be asking: "What the heck is dayparting?"

According to Wikipedia:

"In broadcasting, dayparting is the practice of dividing the day into several parts, during each of which a different type of radio programming or television programming apropos for that time is aired. Programs are most often geared toward a particular demographic, and what the target audience typically engages in at that time."

Basically, when it comes to pay-per-click, dayparting refers to the practice of increase bids during the hours of the day that conversions are at their highest. While this can result in much higher returns on investment for your cost-per-click, it can also result in a hefty time increase in management of your pay-per-click accounts, even if you are using some type of automated bid management tool. For a solid overview of dayparting and how it works, you can also check out Kevin Lee's article "The Lunchtime Effect."