Advice on Displaying 24 Hour Opening

Question

There's a similar question but it doesn't address the same issue so I have opened another.

I need to display opening hours to website visitors in a clear, easy to understand way. The business opening hours vary throughout the year and templates are used to populate times. The templates allow for adding open/close times (e.g. 8am - 5pm) or custom text ('e.g. appointment only').

some examples are below;

Template 1 (standard hours)
Mon 8am - 5pm
Tue 8am - 5pm
Wed 8am - 5pm
Thu 8am - 5pm
Fri 8am - 5pm
Sat 8am - 5pm
Sun 8am - 5pm

Template 2 (extended hours - open from 8am until 2am the following day, 16hours)
Mon 8am - 2am
Tue 8am - 2am
Wed 8am - 2am
Thu 8am - 2am
Fri 8am - 2am
Sat 8am - 2am
Sun 8am - 2am

Template 3 (24 hour opening - partial)
Mon 24 hours
Tue 24 hours
Wed 24 hours
Thu 24 hours
Fri 24 hours - closes 2am
Sat 8am - 2am
Sun 8am - 2am

I think Template 1 & 2 above are fine, users seem to understand these. The issue is with Template 3 - as they close for 6 hours between 2am and 8am during fri/sat and sat/sun.

Is there any better way to display this information to the user? I feel like fri/sat/sun could be improved somehow.

I'm not able to display a graphical representation to users, only times / text - however do have the ability to use 12 or 24 hour format.

Answer 1

First of all I will say that to me it already makes sense and I understand exactly what is meant by your examples. However, here are some suggestions anyway.

I will focus on the "Friday" for "Template 3" as everything else seems fine.

I think the best way to improve it would be to explicitly add "Sat" to the closed time. There are 2 obvious ways to do this:

Fri 24 hours - Sat 2am
Sat 8am - 2am
...

or

Fri 12am - Sat 2am
Sat 8am - 2am
...

It really depends how keen you are to keep the "24 hours" consistency. Personally, I prefer the second option as it avoid mixing time formats.

Answer 2

The problem seems to be that it's not easy to say when the store opens on Friday.

I'd hypothesise that most people understand what is meant by 24 hours, but when you introduce the closing time, things get confused because you're 'mixing formats'.

Suggestion:

Mon - Thurs open 24 hours

Fri open until 2am

Sat 8am - 2am

Sun 8am - 2am