This article is from page 27 of the 2011-07-26 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 27 JPG
CLARE small businesses and sole traders are jumping at a chance to get their services and products on the web for next to nothing.
A course in getting a business website up and running, which the Clare County Enterprise Board intended to run for one session, has exploded in popularity with the board having had to put on eight courses and counting.
The course, sponsored by Google, web hosts Black Knight and the Enterprise Boards gets a business or any self-employed person online with their own website in just three hours of intensive work. And it costs just € 25, a fraction of the amount that a struggling business would normally have to shell out.
The scheme was set up in the wake of a study which showed that only about half of small Irish businesses have their own websites. And the chance to have a presence online is proving far more popular in Clare than in other counties involved in the nationwde scheme, according to CCEB business advisor, Lucy Reidy.
“It has really taken off. We thought we might have had interest from seven or eight small businesses or individuals but instead we’ve had 80 sign up so far and requests for places on the course are still coming in, and that’s without even adverstising it,” Lucy told The Clare People .
“From our contact with other Enterprise Boards who are running the scheme, the takeup elsewhere isn’t anything like we’ve seen in Clare.”
The course involves three hours of intensive tuition and work with train- ers. The instructors contact course particpants in advance to have them gather up pictures, prepare descriptions of the business and any other relevant information which might be needed for the site.
“After the three-hour course, people go home with their website up and running and enough tuition to make changes to it themselves. The course is open to all professionals, whether they are in retail engineering, solicitors, catering, all fields. The only restriction is that to have a ‘.ie’ site you have to be a registered company, but people don’t have to be registered to have a ‘.eu’ or ‘.com’ site,” Lucy explained.
She added that the CCEB will continue to provide the courses for “as long as people want to do them and all partcipants have to pay is the € 25 to cover things like hiring costs.”
The next course is being run on August 31 and there are still some places available.
Anyone interested can apply online through the Enterprise Board’s website or ring for information on 065 6841922.