Think about it – sipping your morning coffee while watching the rolling green hills, all the while running a thriving online business. Sounds fantastic, doesn’t it?
Whether you’re a total newbie to online entrepreneurship or a seasoned business owner looking to venture into the digital landscape, our guide will be your trusty companion. We’ll lead you through the 10 crucial steps to starting an online business in Ireland successfully.
Ready to become a part of Ireland’s bustling digital economy? Let’s take the first step together on your journey to success. Onward to the Emerald Isle of entrepreneurship!
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What Makes Ireland A Promising Country For Doing Online Business?
There is a wide range of reasons for starting an online business in Ireland but here are the major ones:
Irish e-commerce has witnessed strong consecutive annual revenue growth in the last five years. In 2018, the total revenue of online business rose impressively by 45% compared to the previous year.
Ireland ranks fourth in the world in terms of GDP per capita (approx. $69,189). That’s why their average consumer spending in general, and online spending in particular, are always at a high level.
Moreover, the amount of traffic to Irish e-commerce websites as well as the successful order placement rate in those stores have also experienced a considerable increase year-on-year. It means that the Irish shoppers are not only browsing products more on online stores but also converting more.
For all of the above reasons, Ireland is undoubtedly a highly potential market for doing business online.
In this blog post, we would like to show how to set up an online business in Ireland with 10 essential steps:
Step 1: Research & Select A Business Name
First and foremost, you must spend your time thinking of a suitable name for your Irish online business. There are some things you should keep in mind when considering a name:
- It must fit the business now and in the future, and that it is meaningful and not confusing
- It should not be similar or coincide with other companies/ brands
- It should be concise and easy to memorize and pronounce
After brainstorming and creating a list of some interesting business names, it’s essential to check the availability of every name to see whether anyone has trademarked them.
Step 2: Register Your Business Name
The second crucial step is carrying out business name registration. As you might know, registering an online business in Ireland is mandatory.
To register the name of your business, you must submit a standard form to the Companies Registration Office and a registration fee of €40 for paper filing or €20 for electronic filing.
It’s worth noting that you might have to wait for 3 weeks from the date of form submission to get the certificate of your business name. Check out more information here.
Step 3: Buy A Domain For Your Website
A domain name is your website’s location on the internet. It translates the digits that make up your IP address into something catchy that people can remember.
To register a domain, you should visit websites that provide services on domain name registration (e.g.: GoDaddy, Namecheap, Hover). Then, you can enter the keyword in the domain you want to buy, and pick the one you like among available options.
If your preferred domain has already been registered by another person or business, there are 2 possible solutions. First, you can contact the current domain owner to negotiate and re-buy the domain (commonly at a high price). Second, you can take other other domain suffixes into consideration (e.g.: .com, .net, .biz, .org, .business, etc. instead of .ie).
Step 4: Select A Proper E-commerce Platform
Next, what you need to do is compare popular e-commerce platforms in Ireland and opt for the most appropriate one for your website.
If you don’t know, the top 5 e-commerce platforms for online business in Ireland include Magento, Shopify, BigCommerce, Volusion, and WooCommerce.
Among that, Magento seems to be the best framework. The 2 versions of Magento (Open Source and Commerce) can meet the need of both small to large e-business. Since you are starting your online store, we highly recommend you to go for Magento Open Source. Although this is a free version, it provides all fundamental functionalities to build a powerful website.
Step 5: Choose A Hosting Provider
The reason why we suggest you choose the hosting service after step 4 is that you can skip this step if your selected platform is hosted.
For example, Shopify and BigCommerce are all-in-one online solutions that offer hosting and e-commerce function. Meanwhile, Magento, WooCommerce, Prestashop, OpenCart is self-hosted platforms, you need to figure out a suitable hosting service yourself.
Assumed that you opt for Magento website development, you can use the Cloud hosting service of Linode, combined with RunCloud to manage your host.
Step 6: Look For A Trusted Web Development Agency
For an online store, the website might contribute the most to business success. Therefore, you must carefully select the right website design and development company to create your website.
A tip is that you should ignore the thinking of looking for the best Irish web agency but choose the most suitable website design company in Ireland for your business. That agency must have years of experience in e-commerce website development (proved by their previous work) and offer pricing that meets your budget.
By the way, if you are looking for a reputable Magento development company that provides a reasonable price, Tigren Solutions is always on top of the list. Founded in 2012, we’re specialized in e-commerce solutions focused 100% on the Magento framework. Now, we are delivering a wide range of Magento services, from website design and development, mobile app development, extension development to monthly support.
For all of our Magento development projects, we offer 3 months of after-service support without extra cost.
Step 7: Prepare Your Budget
To build an e-commerce website, most Irish store owners will invest at least $3,000, which covers the cost of buying the domain, hosting, new theme, plugins, and hiring the web design company.
If this is the first time you have started an online business in Ireland, we guess it’s very difficult to estimate all of the costs yourself. That’s why you should look for professional consulting services or discuss directly with your chosen website development company.
Contact us if you want to get a free estimate for your upcoming project.
Step 8: Start Your Website Design & Development Process
After reaching the agreement with the web agency and completing the payment (deposit), it’s time to start your web development process.
Although the developers will be responsible for implementing the work, you should stand by them, give them timely support as well as follow their work to make sure that everything goes on track.
In many cases, there might be some unexpected issues that are raised during the development process, you will need to discuss with the coders to find a solution.
Step 9: Test Your Website Comprehensively
Overall, the developers will set up a development website and carry out all of your project requirements on it. After finishing the work, their internal testing & QA team will test throughout the dev site before your turn.
There are a lot of things that you need to concern when testing a new e-commerce website, from the design, page speed, product and catalog browsing, product add to cart/ wishlist/ comparison list, checkout, email templates, invoice, shipment, to promotions, URLs, etc. Everything must be perfect before moving data from the development site to the live one.
Not yet, even in the production mode, you still need to do a comprehensive test again.
Step 10: Implement SEO On-page & Off-page
Needless to say, SEO is pivotal for your online business presence on the Internet. If you don’t have strong knowledge about it, hiring an SEO expert to examine your new web might be a good choice.
For SEO On-page, some e-commerce platforms provide you with useful features by default. For instance, you can edit URL key, meta title, meta description for each page of the Magento store as well as generate a sitemap to submit Google. Also, it’s easy to integrate your site with Google Analytics, Google Adwords, or Google Tag Manager. Furthermore, you can install a Blog plugin to build attractive content on your website.
Are You Ready To Set Up An Online Business In Ireland?
To sum up, there are 10 major steps for you to build an online business in Ireland, including select and registering a business name, buying a domain, choosing a platform and proper hosting service, contacting a web agency to get a quote, and preparing your budget, develop your website with thorough testing, focus on SEO to boost online presence.
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