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If your website's # of visitors produced a weekly bell curve, with say Sunday generally being the lowest and Wednesday or Thursday being the peak... What day of the week would be best to regularly add major content updates?

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    ...from a user experience perspective, or from a 'business goals' perspective?
    – Roger Attrill
    Commented Mar 28, 2012 at 19:26
  • How is the content being consumed?
    – Nic
    Commented Mar 28, 2012 at 19:42
  • From a user perspective.
    – aslum
    Commented Mar 28, 2012 at 19:56

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Assuming you don't require downtime...

If you want user feedback prior to the "busy hours" (so you can make amendments), perform update on lowest demand.

If the update doesn't require feedback and you want users to feel like they are getting the newest content, perform the update prior to the peek (e.g. at 50% of the expected peek on the way up to the peek) so that the peek users will get the freshest content.

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Though sunday seems the logical conclusion,do inform your users in advance that you will be bringing the site down on Sunday during this time period (mention the time zone too) so that people are aware of it well in advance and are not surprised to find it down.

When your site is down do provide an informative or even fun message which tells them when the site will be back up.

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    Or perform updates side by side with existing version and switch the user to the updated version without any downtime.
    – Danny Varod
    Commented Mar 28, 2012 at 19:47
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    That would be ideal if the site is just html but if there are databases which have to be updated,then you will have downtime and better to tell people that the site is not working rather than run a query and get frustrated
    – Mervin
    Commented Mar 28, 2012 at 19:49
  • Downtime isn't an issue. It's more that if we post something on Friday say, in the example I gave most people would miss it, or see it "late".
    – aslum
    Commented Mar 28, 2012 at 19:57
  • Thats the reason you dont post the downtime on the last minute. Post a notification about it on top of the site for a week so that all users can see it
    – Mervin
    Commented Mar 28, 2012 at 20:08
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    @MFrank2012 You can either have an additional mirrored database and switch between the two at each update, or plan the updates better, so that they don't require DB downtime.
    – Danny Varod
    Commented Mar 29, 2012 at 0:16

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