Press Release: Blacknight Announce Over 10,000 Irish Businesses Are Participating in Getting Business Online

Getting Business Online Launch (Photo credit: blacknight)

We put this release out earlier today about the first year of the Getting Business Online project. It’s been an interesting year! 🙂

So far the story has been picked up in a few media outlets including:

DomainIncite: Even when the domains are free, Irish small businesses prefer .com to .ie

Here’s the release:

May 16, 2012 – Carlow, Ireland – Blacknight called for Irish businesses to get online and Irish businesses took up the challenge.

Over 10,000 Irish businesses have signed up for the Getting Business Online (http://gettingbusinessonline.ie/) program in its first year. The initiative is a partnership between Blacknight (http://www.blacknight.com) , Google, An Post and the County & City Enterprise Boards aimed at helping Irish small businesses develop an Internet presence by providing the opportunity to create free business websites.

Ronan Harris of Google Ireland states: “There are still 30,000 businesses in Ireland without a web presence and we have to continue to reach out to these companies to help them take the first step.  But, if we are to generate economic wealth,  the real objective must be to get companies transacting business online.  This is the holy grail which will ultimately deliver for every business in every townland throughout the country”.

Michele Neylon of Blacknight states: “We are delighted that we’ve managed to get over 10,000 businesses in the first year. The power of the economy comes from small business and this program has been all about getting small, Irish businesses to use the Internet to their advantage.”

As a part of the Getting Business Online program, Blacknight have created software that allows participating users to build a free website in under 30 minutes.  While not intended to replace a professionally built site, they provide a gateway for “brick and mortar” businesses to gain confidence while conducting business online.

Blacknight not only provide free websites and the software to build them, they also offer free hosting with an .ie, .eu or .com domain name for one year.

Based on Blacknight’s figures, during the first year, 60% have registered .com, 21% registered .ie, 13% registered .eu and 4.2% .biz.

Neylon adds: ““Looking back on twelve months of activity, we saw that Irish business are opting for .com domains. It would be great if they were registering .ie domains but we’ve seen that registrants prefer domains that are easier to register. Throughout 2012 we hope to add new features to make getting online even more attractive to Irish businesses.”

Regardless of the chosen extension, Irish businesses are continuing to participate in the Getting Business Online program with several hundred registrations per month.

Sign up today and join the Irish business Internet revolution!

For more information on Getting Business Online, please visit http://gettingbusinessonline.ie/