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Google poised to improve online presence for small businesses in Nigeria

By on January 22, 2013

Knowing how vital small businesses are to the growth and development of an economy, Google Inc the biggest global search engine Company has restated its commitment to aiding small medium enterprises even as it is worried about the low level utilization of online services.

Across the globe, especially in developed and strategic emerging economies, small businesses or SMEs have in order to advance their network reach and service delivery potentials, have explored and engaged the Internet services.

In a recent Interview, the Country Manager of Google-Nigeria, Ms Juliet Ehimuan stated that despite the landmark established by the company in promoting the presence of small businesses online, there is still much work to be done.

She said “We realised that there are over two million small and medium business outfits and most of them are offline, and in less than a year, a lot of that traffic came through in 2011. In less than a year, we were able to get 40,000 Small Medium-scale Enterprises online with professional websites. That is one example, and there have been some great stories from that as well, such as business growth and increased customer acquisition and customer awareness”.

Outlining the plans of the Company to improve the situation in the year 2013, Ms Ehimuan said, three things will form the core of the operational strategy, First will be to Increase the access point for small businesses, making it also affordable for them to use.

The Second, she said will be to ensure that the Internet becomes more locally relevant to the small businesses, so that they can find it useful to their environment and operations. This, according to her will build a strong platform for them and increase their capacity.

On the third aspect termed Sustainability , the Country Manager stated that developers will be needed to improve content, applications and create stronger platforms, so that small businesses accessing the Google platform will have better experience and quality service.

This year, Google is determined to boost online presence of small businesses in the country, and with the dynamic leadership quality of 2013 Information Technology personality award winner, Ms Juliet Ehimuan , this year promises to be a remarkable one.