By Business & Finance 
Gary Disley, marketing director, eircom Business Solutions
The eircom Spiders Digital Workshop, which was held in The River Lee Hotel, Cork today, was attended by a large number of business owners from across Co. Cork.
The event was designed to support and enable Irish companies to improve their digital presence through a practical workshop lead by industry experts. Companies were invited to attend this free workshop and participate in thought leading presentations on how to grow their businesses through digital channels, strategies and best practice.
Gary Disley, marketing director, eircom Business Solutions spoke on emerging trends at today’s workshop. Disley’s presentation included trends in mobile, apps and retail becoming ‘phygital’. Customers are combining the physical and the digital in the purchase process.
Speaking at the event, Disley said: “This is a very important event for us. The workshop demonstrates eircom’s continued support of enterprise and innovation in Ireland. We know that at least 30,000 small Irish businesses do not trade online. We also know that Irish consumers spent €3.7bn online in 2012 with about 70% of that spend transferring out of Ireland. The reality is that SMEs are losing valuable opportunities to grow because they aren’t tapping into the potential of digital activity. We want to change that! We have experts from across many business disciplines providing free advice today and we guarantee that any SME attending today’s workshop with leave with increased knowledge and confidence to take their business to the next level”.
The workshop was moderated by Colin Meagle, founder of Continuum and Trilabyrinth. Meagle serves as chief advisor to a wide range of ecommerce, financial and process-based organisations throughout Europe and the US and advises on entrepreneurial and CSR efforts for a number of organisations and individuals in Ireland. Other speakers on the day included: Barry Hand, owner of Handmade Marketing, who spoke about the importance of analytics; Gerard Keohane, founder of StudioForty9, who demystified conversion rate optimisation for attendees;and Stephen Ryan, head of marketing at Fota Wildlife Park, who gave a very interesting talk about the value of social media to a business and tips on how to create a social media following that keeps growing.
