Enterprise Ireland is currently seeking new Business Partners to help us create start-up companies. We want to hear from successful business people to partner with us to transform State funded research projects into profitable commercial ventures. Our Business Partners Programme is fast tracking the creation of new companies by giving you access to our portfolio of potential start-ups. It will be your job to lead them to the marketplace. We would like to hear from you if you have:
a strong commercial track record
excellent business credentials
capacity to invest
ability to identify commercial opportunity
vision to transform new technologies into solid businesses
Here are some links to supporting material for the Internet Strategy lecture delivered by John Prendergast to the MBA program at University College, Cork.
Customers may be talking about your brand online - even if you are not!
It’s important to monitor activity around your brand online - here’s a classic customer service nightmare for United Airlines which obviously touched a nerve…
This is a humerous (but clearly serious for the target brand) version of the increasing phenomenon of the consumer hitting back online (more…)
Google is phasing out support for IE6 in it’s Google Doc suite (see below). Hopefully this will help force users to upgrade their browsers, which will be a major benefit to developers. IE6 has long been the bain of QA and testing departments in web design and development houses as it is very quirky (I’m being polite). (more…)
We would like to wish everyone a happy Christmas and a prosperous New Year! Best regards from all the team at Aonach. We look forward to talking to you in the new year. Our offices will be closed from 23rd of December until 4th of January 2010
Google have an interesting Internet Statistics resource called Google Internet Stats which they are aggregating from 3rd parties. It looks like a very interesting little widget…
I noticed it’s not as accurate as one might have imagined…
In January 2009, JP Morgan estimated that 2008 worldwide retail eCommerce spending, excluding travel, totaled $438 billion - of which one third ($152m) was in Europe.JP Morgan, January 2009
Now I presume that they meant $152 billion - so as ever with this type of thing you need to check for accuracy and you also probably need to understand the context of the research and the statisitical tools used for analysis. But as a quick thought provoking snapshot of the state of the Markets I think it’s great…
Some of the interesting eCommerce Stats that caught my eye were as follows:
41% of Europeans claim to have changed their mind about what brand to buy as a result of researching choices online,
John Lewis is the latest online retailer to jump on the “click and collect” trend. They are trialling a service which will allow shoppers to order goods online at JohnLewis.com and then go and pick them up at a store. The twist in the tail on this one is John Lewis only has 26 outlets which is quite limiting, so they have decided to include their Waitrose’s supermarkets as collection points. This will extend their reach giving them an additional 213 collection points that are widely distributed. The Waitrose collection points concept is being trialled in Hexham and Tonbridge.
Click and collect services, where goods are ordered online and picked up from a store, are one of the fastest-growing trends among internet retailers. Argos last week reported its Click & Reserve service was up 45% on last year and is responsible for 17% of all sales. Halfords.com were another early mover and their reserve and collect service has driven an increase in multichannel sales of 90% in the year to April 2009, having passed the million customer mark.
This trend makes huge sense for the consumer and the retailer. The consumer doesn’t have to wander round the shop or queue endlessly for checkouts, but can select goods from a reputable brand at their leisure online. For the retailer the upside is this makes the nightmare of shipping goods to individual homes (and trying to find people when they are at home) go away. Indications are that these multichannel approaches also drive more people to the store (above and beyond the online purchasers). Nevertheless, it’s not all easy - it requires accurate realtime stock levels and a slick customer experience both on and off-line to succeed.
Google circulated some interesting statistics on the state on the online market in Ireland. Some of this information is derived from market research by 3rd parties but some is internal, all of it useful if you’re trying to guage the size and opportunity of the Irish online channel.
69% of Irish people are regular internet users
1.25 million people are subscribed to broadband in Ireland
Ireland is ranked 10th in the world for online buyers
25% of Irish people expect to spend more online in 2009
50% of irish consumers look for advice online before making a purchase
90% of consumers beieve they can save money online
The average online spend of an Irish consumer was €1700 for 2008
€300 million worth of goods were purchased online in Ireland in 2008
€2.5 billion spent in total online transactions in Ireland in 2008 (including travel, gambling and finance)
96% of internet users in Ireland use Google
Youtube has 131,000 Irish users on an average day
47.5% of Irish Youtube users are aged 25-44
This information was circulated as part of a marketing drive by Google, so those of us with a natural distrust of statistics and marketing will probably want to check the numbers before making any major strategic decisions!
What’s new over at Google? Well, they have unveiled a preview of their next update codenamed “Caffeine” - you can trial it over here at http://www2.sandbox.google.com…
What’s all the fuss about? Well, when Google opens up a test environment to their next release it’s alway good to have a look and see how it may effect the performance of your site in the SERPs…
Some analysts have cited faster speeds (with very little backup) so we decided to test this on the search term “Ryder Cup” which we monitor for our case study.
“normal” Google - speed 0.42 seconds
Google“Caffeine”- speed 0.11 seconds
So is it 381% faster?
Well one swallow doesn’t make a summer so we performed 100 searches 50 on Caffeine and 50 on the current Google.com (not intended to be a statistically significant analysis - we’re just trying to get an indication) and measured the speed for each search. How did it perform? Well here are the stats on the speed recorded for both…
So what does this tell us? Basically it’s faster and more consistent (about 254% faster) - but is that just because it’s not yet under load?
Twitter is an increasingly powerful online tool. It’s not for everyone but increasingly it is making inroads into the business world…
The art of building a network based on 140 character updates is pretty much mainstream now - if you want to start sign up at Twitter.com and for a great guide to getting going download Mashable’s guide to twitter
Google are calling companies and promising them a No1 listing in Google - No they are NOT!
If you are contacted by someone alluding that they are from Google and asking whether you want to sign up to their service and guaranteeing you a number 1 position on Google search results - just hang up the phone…
Google NEVER phone businesses and promise them a number 1 position in their rankings - this is just a scam. It’s a UK agency that offer dubious SEO services and infer that they are calling from Google.
If you want to be listed by Google there’s some work involved I’m afraid. Bear in mind that Google’s business is advertising and one of their primary precepts is to offer the user a search result set based on merit (rather than human editorial intervention). They have invested over 1000 man Years in developing their system, which automatically determines your search position for any search term - so they are not going to jeopardize this by offering to allow you to jump the queue.
Is it valuable to be listed in the Google search results? Absolutely! It’s essential if you want to do business online. How do you go about it?
You need to have a website (obviously!)
The site should technically expose it’s content, structure and relevance to Google
Read the Google Webmaster Guidelines http://google.com/support/webmasters This is where Google actually tell you how to be found and what to avoid!
Ask other (quality) sites to link to you
Ensure that you acually have useful and relevant content on you site - remember that Google only wants to send IT’s users to sites where they will find what they are looking for…
This is a potted synopsis of a much more complex principle - however I hope it will help you realise that being ranked in Googles search results is something you should take seriously and not simply hope to pay a few quid to someone who cold calls you on the phone for! Read more on Search Engine Optimisation Here
