Small and Medium Scale Enterprises (SMEs) in the country are yet to leverage on technology to drive growth due mainly to the relatively high cost of designing and developing websites, experts in this field said at the weekend.
According to statistics from the Ministry of Finance, there are about 17 million SMEs in Nigeria and this means that there are lots of local products and services that could be showcased on the Internet and made known to the entire world that are searching for quality products.
Mr. Tobi Asehinde, the CEO of Vibe Web Solutions, said that majority of the enterprises do not have websites as a result of the high cost of hiring a website developer and lack of technical skill to develop one themselves.
He however advised entrepreneurs to avail themselves of some initiatives by IT and financial sectors which enable business owners create their own web pages.
Asehinde said that ”The first thing people see when they go to your website is your domain name – so you wouldn’t want to go wrong. It gives you respect and if you want good conversion rate for your website, a domain name is essential.
“This is why we have launched a site called smestartuphub.com which has a website builder that allows small medium enterprise owners to build their mobile responsive website with their own domain name, and search engine optimisation with no technical skills required. They also get to save their time by using a drag and drop tools. It comes packed with everything you need to build a full-featured website including FREE hosting and email.
Mr. Agboola Toheeb, chief technical officer, ITRN Technologies Limited, added that the first step is for the SMEs to appreciate the value.
“Then, they need to work with professional companies who can help them harness the value. This is critical too, because there are cases where those to decide to follow the trend approached unprofessional. That will end up compounding the challenges they have. There are people who are looking for shortcuts to make money and could ask you to bring, probably, N50,000 and end up adding no value to your business. Whether the fees become cheap or not, they should not shy away from approaching professionals”.