Analytics
Choose Your Live Time Slots With Your Own Audience Data, Not a Generic “Golden Hour”
You've probably read that “8 pm is the golden hour for selling live.” It isn't necessarily wrong, but it's an answer for a faceless crowd. Your audience might be office workers watching at lunch, parents who finally have a quiet evening, or students who stay up late. The most reliable way to find out is to measure it yourself.
Why generic golden hours can mislead you
Every channel has its own audience, product niche and habits. A book-review channel might come alive at 10 pm, while a home-goods channel gets more viewers at midday. Peak hours are also when many other people are broadcasting, so being live then doesn't automatically make you easier to find. Instead of guessing, treat each live as a small experiment.
A simple 2–3 week experiment
- Pick three candidate slots, for example lunch, early evening and late evening. Base them on your real audience's routines, not just when you happen to be free.
- Keep everything else roughly constant: same length, same type of content, same opening. If you change too much, you won't know what caused the difference.
- Go live at least twice per slot, mixing weekdays and weekends. A single session is easily skewed by luck, like an event that night or heavy rain.
- After each live, spend ten minutes writing down a few numbers and impressions while you still remember them.
- At the end of week three, put the slots side by side and compare.
What to write down
You don't need a complicated spreadsheet. A notes file with a few fixed lines is enough:
- Date, start time, duration and topic of the live.
- Peak viewers, average viewers and average watch time, if the platform provides them.
- Number of comments, genuine product questions, and orders or cart clicks, if available.
- Free-form notes: was chat lively, when did people leave, were there any technical problems?
Metrics are named and calculated differently across platforms, so compare within one platform and check that platform's latest analytics tools and policies.
How AI helps with your notes
After a few weeks you'll have a pile of scattered notes. AI is quite good at this part: paste them all in and ask it to group them by time slot, summarise the strengths and weaknesses of each, and list the questions viewers keep repeating. You can add an instruction such as “use only the data I gave you, and say so if it isn't enough to conclude anything.” That helps stop the AI from inventing trends that aren't there.
One honest caveat: with only a handful of lives, your data is a hint rather than proof. AI summarises quickly, but you make the decision.
What to do after the experiment
Pick the slot that looks strongest and go live consistently for at least two weeks so viewers can build a habit. Announce your fixed schedule in your channel bio and at the end of each live. Then re-test from time to time: audiences change, seasons change, and your data should be refreshed too.