State’s online shoppers had busy weekend

While more people opted to kick off their holiday shopping from smartphones and computers this year, the amount of online sales varied by state.

The San Francisco firm Stitch Labs, which helps track sales at small- and medium-size companies, has determined per capita spending for each state on Thanksgiving weekend (Thursday through Saturday).

While the figures reflect only sales flowing through Stitch Labs’ clients and don’t provide a comparison to brickand-mortar stores, the company’s data scientist, Bridge Mellichamp, said the sample is a good measure of how smalland medium-size businesses fared online during the holiday weekend.

According to the analysis, the average California shopper spent 1.4 times more on Black Friday than the average American. Certain parts of the East Coast, such as New York and Washington, also pulled in aboveaverage sales. “We continue to see larger and more metropolitan areas spending more online,” Mellichamp said.

Those in the Southeast were much less active, with people in Arkansas and West Virginia spending roughly half as much as the average Black Friday consumer. “Those states are more likely to thrive on that energy and atmosphere of going into the stores and the big box retailers,” Mellichamp said.

The low count of online receipts could also reflect low wages: Arkansas and West Virginia are among the poorest states in the nation.

There were some outliers. Shoppers in Utah, a state that’s largely rural, led the nation, spending nearly three times the national average. Mellichamp said many of the sales originated in Salt Lake City.