Shop Ardee has been set up by KMA Solutions as a response to the forced business closures and hardships caused by Covid-19 and the lockdown measures that have followed. Our intention is to provide a free (or paid if you wish) service to allow local businesses in Ardee to “open their doors” to the online shopping community.
Free Service:
Yes FREE. That’s what it says. We’re offering a free, but mildly limited service to get you up and running with an online store.
How It Works:
- We provide you with a free sub-domain, based on shopardee.ie, e.g. mycompany.shopardee.ie
- We provide you with free hosting for your new sub-domain
- You provide us with your company logo, a colour scheme
- We adapt one of the many free shop templates available to incorporate your logo and colours
- You provide photos, descriptions, pricing and any variations (e.g. size, colour, etc.) of up to 20 products that you wish to sell online
- You create your own free account with a payment provider. We recommend Stripe (www.stripe.com) or Paypal
- We build your starter shop and get you online
- We provide some limited training, allowing you to administer your new shop, add & edit products and handle incoming orders (hopefully!)
Limitations:
As with everything that’s free, there are certain limitations. We hope ours aren’t too great, and we will NEVER hold you to ransom over your shop or your domain. Our purpose is to get Ardee businesses back trading. We’d love to be paid, but would be happy with a bit of support. Here’s our short list of limitations to the free service:
- We will only create a few products to get your shop underway – you are not limited to these products though, you can add as many extra products as you need.
- Your shop will run under the shopardee.ie domain – you may move your site to your own hosting, or you may buy hosting from us. We will not charge for moving to your own hosting
- We will provide basic training to get you underway – we can provide more detailed training, or there is a wealth of information on the web for maintaining WooCommerce shops
Go Away With Your Limitations - I Want a Full Site!
If you want to go it alone and run your own shop from the outset then we can certainly help you.
We can work with you to apply for the €2,500 Trading Online Voucher available from the Local Enterprise Office (LEO).
As well as web development, we can also provide domain registration and web & email hosting services. We, in conjunction with KMA Solutions are also a Microsoft Partner and can offer Microsoft Office 365 solutions for better control of your email and online management of your business.
Trading Online Voucher?
The Trading Online Voucher (TOV) by the Local Enterprise Office (LEO) of Ireland has been in effect for a few years now. It originally offered small businesses a 50% voucher for getting a new eCommerce website or updating their existing websites to sell online. With the Covid-19 crisis closing all but the essential businesses LEO has changed the terms of the voucher so that businesses can avail of up to €2,500 with just a 10% input of their own funding. This means access to an online market that may have been previously reserved for the “big hitters” and the likes of Amazon. With a (relatively) small risk businesses can now test the online market to see if they can grab some of the available business now that social distancing and cocooning have now become the norm.
What Do I Need to Qualify for a TOV
Here are the criteria for applying for a TOV as per the LEO website:
- Limited or no e-commerce presence;
- 10 or less employees;
- Turnover less than €2m;
- Applicant business must be trading for at least 6 Months**;
- Business must be located in the area covered by the LEO to whom they make their application i.e. LEOs cannot accept applications from businesses located outside their jurisdiction.
Previous voucher recipients may apply for a second voucher
**applicant business must provide clear proof of trading for a minimum of 6 months to their Local Enterprise Office
*For applications received from April 7th 2020 until September 30th 2020. Further eligibility, terms and conditions apply.
You must also complete the 3 hour Trading Online Workshop – a free online seminar. Booking dates are available here.
Please visit Local Enterprise Ireland or Contact Us for more info.
Don't Qualify for a TOV or Don't Want To Go Through The Process:
OK, so you have too many staff, make too much money or don’t like paperwork. No problem. Talk to us about your online needs and we can put a price and bundle together that will hopefully suit your requirements.