Here’s an interesting, and slightly different, piece of news for this St. Patrick’s Day.
Extrabux.com, a price comparison site that also doles out cash to consumers who make purchases from specific retailers, came out today with a list of the best and worst U.S. states for online shoppers. While we’ve seen similar types of rankings reports in other fields of business, to our knowledge this the first time that anyone’s actually undertaken the task of ranking individual states based on their online shopping environments.
The site focused on four specific criteria to determine its rankings—shipping/delivery time, shipping costs, sales tax rates and the likelihood of paying any sales tax at all.
“Two of our most valued commodities in the world today are time and money,” reads the report’s text on the Extrabux website. “So after analyzing each state’s online sales tax incongruities along with the varying shipping times and costs, we’ve determined the top 5 best and worst places for online shoppers to live–and that we are moving to Delaware.”
Yes, that’s right. Tiny Delaware earns the top spot among the best U.S. states to live in for online shopping, thanks not only to the absence of a state sales tax but also because of its 2.74 days average shipping time and $4.07 average shipping cost (6th shortest and tied for 3rd lowest in the country, respectively.)
Falling in behind Delaware to round out the top five were Mississippi, New Hampshire, West Virginia and Oregon. The consistent factor among all four contributing to their high rankings was little to no sales tax, as well as proximity to major regional shipping distribution centers in the case of both West Virginia and Oregon.
So which states were on the other end of the spectrum?
Alaska and Hawaii come in at the bottom of the list and while sales taxes are low in both states, the hefty cost of having good shipped to each largely explains why they sit at #49 and #50, respectively. The average order shipped to Hawaii takes nearly 5 days and costs more than $19, which might as well be an overnight shipping charge most other places. Alaskans don’t have it much better either.
Rounding out the rest of the bottom five are California (#48, due to high percentage of retailers taxing sales there), New York (#47, thanks to exorbitant taxes across the board) and Washington (#46 because of long shipping times and high shipping costs).
You can read more about the Extrabux report, including a thorough explanation of their criteria, on the company’s blog.
Leave us your thoughts and comments!
