Buying and selling online is nothing new in Ireland, we’ve been purchasing airline tickets and booking hotels for years now. So we’ve steadily become accustomed to doing business online in a safe and secure mode. Doing business online is now the norm. Savvy small and medium sized businesses have seen the opportunity that an ecommerce shop or services portal presents and are now seizing the opportunity.

Benefits of doing business online include the following:

• Reduced costs, you don't need to rent a high-street premises
• The opportunity to sell your product or service around the world
• You can stay open 24 hours a day, seven days a week
• Receive payments more quickly, which works wonders for cashflow
• Attract new customers
• Being able to use your online shop as a catalogue

Consumers now thoroughly research products before buying online to get the best deal for their money. In many cases they are buying products or services from overseas companies. Fortunately many Irish companies are responding to this trend and there has been a descent uptake by the businesses community of online stores; however we are still lagging behind our competitors in Europe and the US who have a greater online presence. Consumers are flocking to large volume discounters like Amazon and eBay to buy products.

There is no reason why small and medium size companies can’t join the party and launch their own ecommerce site or services portal.

E-Commerce Sites are now affordable to small & Medium sized businesses in Ireland. Having your product or service online means you can now at least compete with vendors overseas. One of the most compelling advantages that Irish companies have over their overseas counterparts is that we can respond faster to customers’ needs thereby providing a much better quality of customer support.