You can bet your very last Euro on it. I got sent some stuff by Google last week and I thought I’d share some of the figures they provided.
- 69% of Irish people are regular Internet users
- 1.25 million have broadband
- 50% of Irish consumers look for advice online before purchasing
- €2.5 billion was spent in total online transactions in Ireland in 2008
They also mentioned that Ireland is ranked 10th in the World for online buyers.
I’ve written about this before, a few months ago:
The Internet is Important to Your Potential Customers
The interesting stat for me in this new info is that 50% of Irish consumers will look for advice online before purchasing.
Even if you never aim to sell a single thing online, even if that is not suitable to your product or just not the way you choose to interact with your customers.
Your customers are online.
Your customers are researching online.
Your customers are seeking purchasing advice online.
Many of your customers are online when they make their purchasing decision and there are sales that are going to the business that meets them there.
Tags: consumers research, Internet, Marketing, small businesses, website
Interesting post. We still have a long way to go in my opinion, an example when analysing expenditure for a client I discovered a desk bound employee spent €29 on directory enquiries.
She was sitting in front of a PC with full internet access.
http://www.domybooks.ie
Yeah. Habits are interesting things and can take a long time to change. I was in the opposite situation recently. My car broke down in the middle of nowhere and I needed taxis and garages in the local town. I never even thought of directory enquiries. I rang my brother and while we were on the phone, I asked him to Google what I needed.
Using search engines for what I need is a deeply ingrained habit for me. Even in situations where picking up the phone might be more sensible. Traditional information sources still have their place, not least because many local businesses in Ireland are still surprisingly hard to find online.
I would be keen to know what the total spent in online transactions will be for 2009.
Yeah. It will certainly be interesting to see. Looks like US online spend was still highly significant through the first year of recession but I think that was 2008 figures. 2009 felt a lot worse to me than 2008 so Irish figures for 09 could be a bloodbath.
Difficult to know for sure but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if online retail etc. is down for 09 but outperforms bricks and morter.