Boost Your Online Sales With E-Commerce Expert Niall McCann

Do you trade online? Are you happy with your number of sales? Does your website show off the best side of your business? Do you think you can do better? Do you know you can do better? Or would you just like to take that first step on the ladder of e-commerce?

Then Dungarvan Enterprise Centre has the course for you!

We will be hosting one-to-one e-commerce consultations with expert Niall McCann of Woolshop.ie on Wednesday, November 12^th.

E-commerce is becoming one of the fastest growing trends in business. Here are five reasons why it is important for your business.

In 2013 alone, 43% of Irish consumers made purchases online, while 2.6 million Irish people regularly shop online. According to a report by the Digital Marketing Institute, €4.1bn was spent on online shopping in Ireland in 2011, up from €2.96bn the previous year.

However, 75% of these purchases went through companies outside Ireland. That statistic alone highlights the opportunity for businesses in Ireland to capitalise and cash in on e-commerce.

The e-commerce clinics will be held on a one-to-one basis where e-commerce expert McCann will provide trouble shooting tips on areas such as improving online sales and developing your company’s website.

These clinics are a great opportunity for online businesses to pinpoint and discuss specific issues that will boost online sales. They will also act as an informative gateway for businesses thinking of going online to find out what e-commerce is all about. Just listen to the guys in the short YouTube clip below!

This is the second time Dungarvan Enterprise Centre will be running these workshops. Last year’s participants all benefited from McCann’s sessions and were able to implement his advice which resulted in an increase in online sales.

The fee for this one-to-one private consultation is just €30. Each individual consultation will last for one hour.

McCann’s e-commerce business, The Wool Shop, sells an extensive stock of knitting wool and knitting patterns. It is a family owned business that operates from McCann’s home in Bunmahon.

As a follow on from these clinics Dungarvan Enterprise Centre hopes to establish an e-commerce network. This would allow businesses to learn from each other in a peer-to-peer environment and benefit from each other’s expertise.

To book or for more information, contact Mags on 058 23598 or email dungarvanec@gmail.com. 

Learn How to Create and Manage Your Own Wordpress Website at Dungarvan Enterprise Centre!

Need help managing and maximising your website's potential? Need help putting a website together to begin with? If so, Dungarvan Enterprise Centre has the course for you!

In conjunction with the Local Enterprise Office, Dungarvan Enterprise Centre will be hosting a Website Management and Strategy course on November 20^th.

The course, which will run for a full day at a cost of €80 per person, will be taught by industry expert Carol Faughnan.

In 2014, a website for your business is simply a necessity. If you are not online then you can bet that your competitors are! Having a website for your business gives online customers a glance into your shop window. Read here why you need a website. 

This course is suitable for people who have a Wordpress website but are not sure how to make the most of it, or for people who are looking to set up a Wordpress site for the first time. Wordpress is widely recognised as the best choice for a website. 

This course will provide you with the necessary skills to understand how to manage and run your company website while incorporating a marketing strategy. The extensive course outline will take you through the following areas: 

1. Getting Started 
   • What are the advantages of having a Website? 
   • Your Marketing Strategy
   • Your current online Presence? 
   • Discussion of Goals and Outcomes 
2. Setting up your Website 
   • Logging in 
   • Familiarising yourself with the Dashboard
   • Editing user profiles
   • Adding user profiles for staff
   • Configuring the Dashboard settings
3. Adding the right content to your Website
   • About posts and pages
   • Difference between pages and posts
   • Creating pages
   • Adding Images and thumbnails
4. Blogging 
   • Creating posts and generating titles
   • Text formatting 
   • Adding and managing hyperlinks
   • Adding Images, 
   • Youtube Videos 
   • Adding a photo gallery
   • Adding post categories and tags 
5. Customising your Website        
   • Installing and activating themes
   • Exploring the themes option
   • Installing plugins 
   • Info about various widgets and working with them
   • Setting up custom background and header images
6. Launching your online presence
• Submitting the site to search engines
• Managing users and permission levels
• Managing comments and controlling spam
• Backing up your website
• Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
• Adding social media options like facebook, twitter and many more    
• Your website Traffic                   

As well as a full day training in Website Management and Strategy, one-to-one email training will be provided prior to the event. This will allow Carol to give individual attention to each participant and to their specific marketing challenges on the day, ensuring maximium benefit from attendance.

The Wordpress course will run from 10AM until 4PM with a free lunch included at the interval.

To book a place on this course, or for more information, contact Mags at Dungarvan Enterprise Centre on 058 23598 or email dungarvanec@gmail.com. 

Still not convinced? Check out this short YouTube clip explaining in 3 reasons why Wordpress is the best!

Check Out the Results of our Training Needs Survey Autumn 2014!

The feedback from Dungarvan Enterprise Centre’s Training Needs Survey for autumn 2014 has been astoundingly helpful and informative. Through customer comment and feedback Dungarvan Enterprise Centre has received an abundance of constructive advice which it plans to implement into its programme immediately.

Dungarvan Enterprise Centre discovered that close to 55% of respondents had not availed of a course in our Centre during the past six months with the prevalent reason being due to a lack of relevancy. Dungarvan Enterprise Centre plans to combat this finding by striving to bring the businesses of Dungarvan and West Waterford the most relevant courses. This will be achieved by open communication with business owners and by researching and staying on top of evolving trends in business.

Encouragingly, a massive 97.87% of respondents said they would take a course at Dungarvan Enterprise Centre in the next six months if they thought it was relevant to their business.

Comments under this section also praised Dungarvan Enterprise Centre as a “Great place to learn” and an “Excellent service that is easily accessible”.

As well as that encouraging statistic, we also found that 68.88% of respondents had no difficulty applying courses held at Dungarvan Enterprise Centre to their business. As 26.67% of the respondents were inapplicable to this question, only 4.4% found our courses difficult to apply to the day-to-day running of their business.

Other areas that were suggested by respondents through the comment section indicated an interest in upskilling regarding business plans, health and safety, sourcing new clients, office administration and filing minute taking, and project management.

The comments section also revealed many business owners would appreciate the creation of a networking forum to combat the isolation of working alone. Dungarvan Enterprise Centre is currently putting together an e-commerce forum. This would allow businesses that sell online or wish to do so, the opportunity to learn from each other in a peer-to-peer environment and benefit from each other’s expertise.

We also learned some very interesting statistics on where respondents find information about Dungarvan Enterprise Centre. Email is proving our most effective tool of communication with 83.3% of respondents finding information on us here. Our website (31.25%) and Social Media (20.83%) are also proving strong sources of information.

Overall, we are delighted with the findings and feedback of our Training Needs Survey for autumn 2014. 93.75% of respondents believe Dungarvan Enterprise Centre keeps up to the date with current trends while 97.87% said they would take a course at Dungarvan Enterprise Centre in the next six months if they thought it was relevant to their business.

Further feedback to highlight that Dungarvan Enterprise Centre was meeting customer demands was also revealed in the final comment section where respondents stated: “All evidence points to best practice”, “All courses (and above) show that DEC are up to date with current trends”, and “Notices of upcoming events show the level of commitment DEC has in the business community”.

With the information gained from this survey, Dungarvan Enterprise Centre looks forward to implementing your feedback in our bid to bring you the most relevant and necessary courses and training in the business world for 2015. 

If there is a specific area you would like us to help you please do not hesitate to contact us by phone or email, at 058 23598 or dungarvanec@gmail.com. Or if you know somebody who you think could benefit from what we do, don’t hesitate to send them our way.