[Editor’s note: Neil Dagger, Head of Marketing, Planning, Insight and Analysis at Nominet, writes about the free guides they have produced, and would like to see made available in libraries across the country.]
So why get online?
Recent research reveals that these days around 90% of UK consumers search online when looking to buy a product or service. Many businesses still do not have a website and so are missing out on phone calls, enquiries and leads every day, effectively making themselves invisible to potential new customers. Being online is just an essential part of doing business. Those offline mistakenly believe it’s expensive, time consuming and that you need to be a bit of a techy. There are also business owners who think they don’t need a website as they don’t ‘sell’ online, not realising that a website is a superb source of awareness and brand building.
To help set out clearly and simply why any business needs to be online we have created a short guide. We have printed it and are starting to circulate it nationally through our networks. We have thousands printed and available for anyone that would like to distribute and use them, or you can download from our website: Why Get Online
Free guide to getting online
In addition to our ‘Why get online’ guide, we have also created a guide which contains a step by step approach to getting your business online and growing online. The Dummies guide to getting your business online is available as a PDF.
We also have printed versions we can mail to be distributed across the library network, and we can top you up as stock depletes. Please contact neil.dagger@nominet.uk for printed copies. [If you are ordering on behalf of a library service, please consider channeling your requests through a single contact point]
Who is Nominet?
Nominet, has operated the UK internet domain name registry for over 20 years, is part of the critical national infrastructure and provides cyber security solutions to government. We help hundreds of thousands of businesses get online and grow online. We are a public benefit company putting all our surplus profit back into charitable causes and are the UK’s largest social tech funder. Our stated mission is to positively impact the lives of 1 million people by 2020. Digital transformation is one of these ways, which is why we can fund these guides.
Our small business home page illustrates the type of information we publish: it’s all about helping small businesses and charities do more online and grow online.
Our main Nominet website is at a different address because it contains much that is not relevant to small businesses.
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Please note, this is a guest blog. Views expressed here do not necessarily represent the views of DCMS or the Libraries Taskforce