Four Irish Micro-Enterprise ebusiness case studies

I was speaking at a Tipperary SR CEB event in Clonmel a couple of weeks ago where 4 different businesses each talked for about 20 minutes on the stories of their on-line experiences. The session was lead by John Mitchell from Strata3 whom I have enjoyed seeing in action before and I took notes of each of the 4 to share here.

Very interesting point from the first two in this year of multiple payments solutions being available to businesses (including the new one from Amazon) - the first two businesses generate 50% or over of their turnover from sites with off-line order forms. This is exactly where micro-enterprises need to focus - get started simply and work from there.

Paperpassion.ie
Mary Tarrant was looking for looking for handmade stationary for her wedding a couple of year ago and could not find it so she made her own and started getting enquiries from her friends for more of the same.

Her rural location (beside a road where there is still grass up the middle of it!) meant that she had to put up a website to try and establish some kind of location where people would find her. To her surprise she started getting enquiries within a week of it going up - from both Ireland and the UK.

That was a couple of years ago and she is now on V2 of her site. Some figures and thoughts from her:

• She uses Google Adwords and finds it very good - she recommends that any small business online learn to this themselves and that they also get to grips with the basics of Search Engine Optimisation.
• Her website is currently 60% of her turnover.<
• She offers samples of her work from the site and she estimated that around 50% of those convert to orders.
• Spend the extra and get a content management system for your site if you can.

OmegaBeefDirect.ie
Joe stood up and made it clear that he is a farmer who does not know much about technology - good expectation management! Himself and his wife started their farm in 1997 and made two decisions at the start which they have kept with throughout - they would farm organically and raise a breed of cattle called Galloway.

They started direct sales in 2002 from the back of their jeep and in 2004 took the step of developing a brand for their product. Their online presence did not happen until last year and their first online order was in October 2006.

They have had great PR and benefited from positive comment from opinion influencing journalists which has helped them a lot. Because of their work on the brand and now the site they have started on supply partnerships with other producers with similar approaches to their businesses. This will allow them to fulfil the increased demand they are seeing without having the strain of expanding their own farming.

Some thoughts from Joe

• The site accounts for 50% of their turnover.
• It has brought in trade inquiries - most recently resulting in their burgers being  used in one of the catering operations at the Oxygen festival.
• They use Google adwords.
• Their current site focuses less on them and more on the business (as an aside I reckon that it could do with a little bit more on the back story to make the connection between consumer and producer)

FlyingVisits.ie
Marianne Rafferty gave a great insight into how a micro enterprise (they have 8 employees) has to endlessly balance the known turnover from a physical presence against the possible turnover from a website. With the site demanding the learning of new skill-sets and dealing in new concepts and technology jargon.

Key learning point from her to anyone in business - they commissioned research into their customer base to find out how they had heard of them initially. The overwhelming response was via the website.

Based on that they made the understandable decision to pull their offline budget (radio and local/national print media) and concentrate on the internet. Business slumped.

Why? A review of the research methodology showed that consumers should be contacted within 24 hours of their first contact with a business - because even if they see the advert in a paper and then go to the website the site is all they will remember and that is the answer they give.

Appliancepartsdirect.co.uk
Sean Sunderland has taken his own passion (an intimate knowledge of the innards of most white goods to be found in an Irish kitchen) and translated it into a website that is becoming one of the dominant players in this space in the UK.

The site is content rich and in constant development - with the assistance of the solution providers Nitrosell whose European Head office is in Cork. The site reflects the conflicts which plague any content rich site with a product rich offering (there are 20,000 parts available through the site).

Thanks again to the 4 - it is not easy to stand up in front of a crowd and talk about your business and technology.

keith