• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, September 27, 2013

Shopping and real estate sites see the most traffic from Tuesday to Thursday. Those focused on fashion, games, religion, and arts and entertainment get the heaviest use on the weekend. Wednesday is the peak day for sports sites.

Those are some of the findings from a new study by Opera Software based on usage data from its Opera Mini mobile browser in the U.S. in August. The results mostly fit with what you might expect of how people use their phones during the week. Traffic to more leisure-related sites increases on the weekend, while business categories see more action on weekdays.

Traffic to business sites, in fact, peaks on Wednesday -- the day that has the least amount of page views per user. Wednesday is also the top day for sport sites. Another interesting wrinkle the study pointed up is that traffic increases during the week don’t always align with higher engagement.

Health and fitness sites, for example, get the most visits on Tuesday, but they generate more page views on Thursdays. Likewise, business sites attract their biggest audiences at midweek, but engagement is actually higher on Friday. And food and drink-related sites get a surge of traffic on Thursday, but have the most page views on Tuesdays.

The Opera research also covered how people use their devices by time of day. Americans tend to spend the morning (6 a.m.-10 a.m.) in “lean forward” activities like shopping, social networking and research in categories like automotive and travel. The afternoon (2 p.m.-6 p.m.) is when users are more likely to check business and news sites as well as fashion and entertainment content.

These categories hit a high at midday and remain fairly steady before building again in the evening. Late at night and early morning  (10 p.m.-2 a.m.) is the time for future planning as visits to career and personal finance sites peak during this period.

An Opera spokesperson declined to say how many U.S. users the Opera Mini had other than in the “millions.” But the company said across its Mini, Opera for Android and Mobile Classic browsers globally it had 264 million users, up 26% from a year ago. And more than a third (36%) of those are using smartphones.