N.O. Online Shopping Startup Reports Surge in Black Friday Transactions

NEW ORLEANS — Despite an overall drop in e-commerce sales on Cyber Monday, New Orleans-based tech company Locally — which helps online shoppers find local inventory — said it saw a 501% increase in transactions during the holiday shopping weekend. The company said the results show that more and more shoppers like to research their purchases online but prefer at-store pickup or same-day delivery.

Locally said it also experienced a 430% overall increase in online-to-offline transactions for the month of November.

“I speak to hundreds of shops per week that are seeing increased footfall driven by high-quality online engagements,” said Tom Whelan, Locally retailer activation manager, on a Locally.com blog post. “Many of them agree that while shoppers really do prefer to start their product research online, most will end up heading to a nearby store for pickup, fitting, service, installation, or perhaps to ask a few more detailed questions. Our average retailer is getting tens of thousands of in-stock referrals per month. Google estimates that almost 70 percent of those shoppers will head to a local store after seeing that a product is in-stock.”

Locally reports that Trek, Patagonia, YETI, Asics, New Balance and Sperry were among the brands popular with consumers over the holiday weekend.

Related: N.O. Tech Startup Connects Online Shoppers With Local Inventory