WEBSITES have improved so much in recent years that it can be easy to forget how far technology has come in such a short space of time.

A cursory look at the Amazon website in 2007 depicts a rudimentary online presence, something almost unrecognisable from today’s streamlined models.

The early 2000s was an era where businesses were not fully utilising the vast marketing potential online, but this has changed, with nearly everything available at a click today.

Ensuring businesses maximise their potential online is an area of expertise for Ballymount web based software and marketing solutions business Realise4.

 “Attention spans are getting shorter and shorter, people are getting lazier, what the industry is doing now is producing more captivating images to retain people’s attention,” said Tony Goold, owner of Realise4.

Goold’s small business (five staff, four programmers in Serbia /Poland, plus a variety of experts in different fields), have been to the fore in creating advanced websites for companies, to increase revenue and traffic.

“It’s more of a relationship with our clients. Online development is only a part of it. When I first talk to a potential client, I always try to understand as much about them, in the same way as you would when buying a car in a showroom.

“We provide a service, create a website, increase revenue, use our experience techniques and methods to provide solutions for the weird and wonderful.

“If you are not moving with the times, the times will leave you behind.”

Realise4 clients include Luas, Siac, Byrnewallace solicitors, and is has to be said for disclaimer purposes, Echo.ie, which wouldn’t have been able to handle 125,000 website hits on Monday during Storm Ophelia, had Realise4 not built in the right structures to handle what Goold calls the “peaks and troughs” of online traffic.

Echo.ie has grown exponentially since Realise4 got involved in 2016, doubling its hits to reach 7 million this year, whilst the site also won a recent award for innovation at the South Dublin County Business Awards.

Simon Walsh, Digital Editor and Social Media Manager at Echo.ie said: “Realise4’s guidance and technical expertise have enabled us to grow at the rate we have.

“For us to double our traffic in a year, from 3.4 million to 7 million is incredible.”

With a background in product design, Goold uses his experience to implement improvements.

“We learned a lot from the big snow storm (2010), it was dumped on us at 2pm and you have 100,000 using the Luas website, because tram rails are the most efficient way to get home.

“We restructured the pages so that customers got them in a cached format as opposed to a dynamic page.”

Goold says developments in tech have led to customers and service users expecting instant results.

“I have ideas, bring people together, and after discussions with a client, I will go back to them with concepts they might not have thought about. Everything is becoming more entertaining online.

“When people go on sites now, there is a lot of video, that’s the way it is going.”

As the fast-paced digital age shows no sign of slowing down, Goold fears the Irish government are not doing enough to support the Irish tech industry.

“We could be seeing a mass exodus of tech workers. The Irish government is too focused on the international scene, and not enough on the indigenous scene. The highest patent applications in the world comes from the British Isles region. We have all the ingredients here, but the tech worker today is a migrant worker, it is all about money, and they will move if they have to.”

Article by: By Maurice Garvey 

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