Ultimately your contest start and end dates and times are completely up to you, but we do have some tips that you might find helpful.
What to avoid:
Ending your contest at midnight, especially on a weekday or Sunday. The ending of a contest is often when a lot of activity happens, and ending late at night excludes participants that need to wake up early for work or school the next day (which could be a large amount of your participants).
Beginning or ending your contest on a holiday (Memorial Day, Fourth of July, Halloween, Christmas, New Year’s Eve, etc). Holidays are often busy times in our personal lives, and many participants on those days are distracted and not in front of their computers or mobile devices.
Formatting for midnight:
If you decide to end your contest at midnight on a specific date (for example, midnight on 6/15/2023) the correct format is 11:59:59 PM on 6/15/2023.
Why? 11:59:59 PM is the last second of the day. The next second is 12:00:00 AM, and is the first second of the next day.
Also good to remember: 12:00:00 PM (not AM) is noon, and not the end of the day.
We do have some clients that like to end their contests at noon, and so we will assume that's what you want if you specify 12:00:00 PM as your ending date.