I think it’s fair to say that all business sectors benefit from having a quality responsive website. Within each sector the business may range from a start-up right through to a longstanding multi-national.
As such, there are a wide range of opportunities to access funding, each designed to be suitable to the age and status of your business.
Typically they fall into one of the following categories.
The Back to Work Enterprise Allowance (BTWEA) scheme supports people who are in receipt of particular social welfare payments to become self-employed. The qualifying criteria for this scheme are as follows:
Under this scheme you may avail of grant funding for many things that will assist you with your business, for the online side of things the allowance is €500 for Website registration, related services and production with a 20% contribution being made by the applicant.
If you’re thinking about a new start-up business that has a product or service that is suitable for international markets, has the potential to create 10 jobs or more and has the potential to generate €1m or more in export sales within the first 3 years, then you may qualify for financial assistance from Enterprise Ireland as a High Potential Start-up.
Technical Assistance for Micro Exporter's Grant enables clients to explore and develop new market opportunities. This grants part-funds the costs that can be incurred in investigating and researching export markets, e.g. exhibiting at Trade Fairs, preparing marketing material and developing websites specifically targeting overseas markets.
Enterprises not employing more than 10 people
The “Trading Online Voucher Scheme” has been running for about 5 years now and so far has provided funding to over 2000 different Irish businesses.
In 2014 under the National Digital Strategy the Irish Government recognised that there weren’t enough Irish Businesses operating E-Commerce websites. At that time, 85% of all online spending in Ireland went to foreign retailers, as late as 2017 60% of online spending in Ireland still went to foreign retailers. (Hamilton, 2018)
So, the Irish Government under the National Digital Strategy designed the Online Trading Voucher Scheme aimed at “Optimising your business with an E-Commerce website” The government were really concerned about the amount of monies leaving Ireland considering that “The Irish people are the biggest international online shoppers in the world” and over the last few years the trend towards shopping online has grown in 2018
“Irish consumers spent approximately €7.8bn online, with this figure expected to exceed €10bn by 2020” (Hamilton, 2018)
“According to Government figures, businesses that participated in the LEO Trading Online Voucher Scheme reported a 20pc average increase in sales, with an 80pc spike in sales leads.” (Tannam, 2019)
Your business must meet certain criteria, to qualify for the scheme, businesses must have:
*Find your local enterprise office here>>>
If you don’t meet these criteria you won’t be eligible for this funding:
Example: You run a retail business, employ 9 people, your turnover is less than €2,000,000 per annum and you are located in Cork, you apply to the LEO office in Cork for a Trading Online Voucher
The application will require that you get quotes from 3 different Web Developers, you supply these and some information about your business, attend one of their regular information sessions and all things being equal you are awarded the Online Trading Online Voucher.
Note: The LEO office does not decide or define who you work with, that is entirely up to you regardless of the difference in quote values.
NOTE: You can only get a refund on monies spent after your application has been processed and you have been accepted on the scheme.
This section sets out the main funding supports and programmes for established small and medium sized enterprises in the manufacturing and internationally traded services sectors. An Established SME client is a company that is not a High Performance Start Up client, has an established trading record, the company (or its group of companies) employs between 10 and 250 employees, has either an annual turnover of less than €50m or an annual balance sheet of less than €43m.
Generally speaking, if you haven’t accessed funding
recently, then you are most likely eligible for one of the funding
opportunities listed above. The one thing I wouldn’t do is to do nothing. Each and every day your company has a poor
website presence or worse still, no website presence, your competitors are rising above you!
Tannam, E. (2019, April 19th). Government announces funding for small businesses to boost e-commerce. Retrieved from Silicon Republic: https://www.siliconrepublic.com/companies/small-business-funding-ireland