The number of Irish businesses with websites and email addresses
I have been trying to collect rough numbers on the number of businesses in Ireland, how many have websites and email addresses. I was thinking of sitting on this information for a while, being in no particular hurry I was happy to collect the information over time.
Reading a recent post on Damien Mulleys blog regarding innovation vouchers from Enterprise Ireland, I’d like to sum up what I have so far and see if this information would be good grounds to apply for those innovation vouchers to continue collecting useful and relevant information for eWrite.
Number of businesses in Ireland
I started with Goldenpages.ie. I used the search engine to search for results located in each county of Ireland and added up all the results. In total it shows 122,199 businesses altogether in Ireland. I may yet go through the results in detail to record the number with websites and email addresses.
Moving on to business.ie, I added up all the businesses in the Business Lists broken down by area. This produced a result of 367,687. This turned out to be inaccurate, it didn’t occur to me at the time for some reason that many businesses would overlap into more than one area or county.
I contacted the people behind the scenes at business.ie and a very helpful member of staff provided me with more accurate details. Their database includes 100,609 trading companies and organisations in Ireland.
Businesses with websites and email addresses
45,569 of these companies include email addresses and 23,781 with websites. If these figures are roughly accurate it means just over 45% of businesses trading in Ireland have email addresses and a mere 24% have websites.
I wanted to know how many of these email addresses were @eircom or even @tinet.ie email addresses. I have to pay for that information though, so I haven’t gone down that road yet.
I have been trying to contact other organisations including CRO, CSO, IBEC, Small Firms Association (SFA), Irish small and Medium Enterprises association (ISME) but they either haven’t responded to me or don’t have any information in this area.
I will contact Enterprise Ireland too, but I might hold off and apply for Innovation Vouchers instead.
Irish Blogs
While I was thinking of Irish businesses with websites, I wondered about the numbers of blogs out there too. I contacted Irishblogs.ie. Again I was met with a very open person willing to give a complete stranger some useful information.
Irish blogs aggregates roughly 2,500 blogs. Only 3% of those blogs are updated daily. 34% update their blogs just over once a month and 31% update their blogs more than once a week.
Summary
The real information I’m after is, out of that 24% of businesses with websites, how many of them have access to update their own site whenever they like without the need to contact someone outside their company?
I have many many more questions, I wonder will this research be appropriate grounds to apply for the Enterprise Ireland Innovation voucher?
I contacted several people to gather this information. Everyone was very open and gave me permission to use the information, I’d like to thank those people here again on the off chance that they’re reading this blog.
Basic pie charts created using Open Office.
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Interesting!
Last year I sent e-mails to about 170 Irish businesses and organisations, inviting them to send their product information (such as a business card, brochure, or product sample) for our information table at a Carers Group event.
TWO businesses replied, though I followed up every ignored invitation with a reminder.
Last week, someone visited the group blog, clicked around to find the telephone number, then phoned the group’s office during off hours to leave a phone message with his website address. Huh? We get plenty of hits, but nobody ever comments; they phone instead, or walk up at a conference and reply to posts *in person*. I’m tempted to say nothing when that happens, then e-mail them my side of the conversation from home, just to be contrary.
I’m beginning to think that we don’t ‘get’ the internet idea in this country.
There’s a good article on IrishHealth.com this week on a similar topic: the lack of websites for hospitals in this country. When you count ‘businesses’, are you counting hospitals, charities and support groups, that sort of thing? (Just curious!)
Thanks for the chance to rant, and good luck on your research. I’d be very interested in what you find.
Hi Susan,
Maybe its a generation thing, many do ‘get’ it and many don’t. I think this will change more to the favour of those that do in the coming years.
I don’t have this information broken down to that level of detail yet for hospitals or charities. Thats one of the things I’d need to pay to find out and why Im now interested in the Innovation Vouchers from EI.
I’ll probably write more blog posts in this topic as I get more information.
I’ve thought about the generation thing too…yet when I look at the regular Irish bloggers (and granted, my favourites!) I’m seeing mostly people in their 30’s and 40’s. I’m guessing you’re right about seeing more of us in future but meanwhile it’s a long wait LOL.
There’s infrastructure to blame too of course; those who might benefit most from being online (ending isolation or accessing services) are rural families like mine, but many of us don’t have broadband. I struggle with my connection most days, in the Northwest.
Good luck with getting your vouchers, and I’ll be looking forward to your posts and research!
Hi Susan,
Maybe the new wave of mini notebooks and 3G modems are the way to go for remote areas to allow people to get online. Mobile and low cost.
Some of those areas can’t get broadband over the telephone lines but can get 3G signal.
Very interesting stats and heartening to know that as a web designer theres still a large market there to tap! I’d say of all the businesses that have email address very few of them bother replying to emails - always amazes me in this day and age!
I’m getting quite a few sites to do lately and my theory is that with the recession, people are desperate for extra revenue streams and are splashing out on sites for extra marketing.
Regarding broadband, all I can get here in the Leitrim wilderness is a faint O2 signal but it keeps me goin…
Interesting post, I suppose I can offer you a hotel industry perspective, from working within the industry in Ireland it appears that only some of these companies are coming to terms with email and websites and they have not engaged in blogging as of yet, I would agree that with the downturn in the economy and the tighten of traditional sales and marketing spend that websites and blogging will increase, it seems that they are just one step behind and fearful engaging new technology maybe it is an information thing?….I guess we will have to wait and see
Ned
Hi Ned,
Thanks for commenting. Hopefully the economy change will help businesses focus on the quality and effectiveness of what they put out there.
A web site, an email address, a blog or a content management system such as our own doesn’t cost the earth, allowing businesses to open themselves out to a larger audience in a cost effective way.
I don’t want to wait and see. Our software is low cost and easy to use. I introduce as many businesses to it as I can and show them alternatives too if it would help them.