Irish shoppers are voting with their mice and a report earlier this morning says that we’ll be spending upwards of 250 million euro online.
Today might not be “Black Friday”, but it will be the biggest day of the year for online shopping according to research from Visa Europe.
Most of the transactions with Visa won’t be on credit cards, however. The company reports that the bulk of the Visa transactions will be with Visa debit cards.
You can read the release here and Irish coverage here
A few years ago I got a digital SLR camera. I used it quite a bit, but now it’s gathering dust.
Why?
Because it’s bulky and carrying it around is awkward and it’s heavy. While a compact camera is a good option to have it lacks a lot of the “punch” of an SLR, so a “bridge” camera was a good middle ground
Panasonic and other camera makers offer a range of bridge cameras that marry the power of an SLR with the size and weight of something a bit larger than a compact camera. Well, maybe that’s a slight exaggeration. A bridge camera will sit somewhere in the middle – which explains the name!
Ireland has a lot of history, so it’s only natural that we would also have a large number of heritage sites dotted around the country. Many of them are managed by the Office of Public Works and are open to the public at no charge. Some sites, however, do come with a cover charge.
As of today all heritage sites run by the OPW will have free entry on the first Wednesday of the month. The situation will be reviewed at the end of the year.
So will this boost tourism? Or is the timing a bit off? It’s now July, which is the height of the tourist season, so one would assume that people have already made decisions on destinations ..
VAT on a range of leisure related products has been reduced from 13.5% to 9%.
The tax reduction is designed to boost consumer spending and job creation and will have a tangible impact on prices of a wide range of leisure items such as newspapers, cinema tickets and more:
• the supply of food and drink (excluding alcohol and soft drinks) in the course of catering or by means of a vending machine • hot take-away food and hot drinks • hotel lettings, including guesthouses, caravan parks, camping sites etc • admissions to cinemas, theatres, certain musical performances, museums, art gallery exhibitions • amusement services of the kind normally supplied in fairgrounds or amusement park services • the provision of facilities for taking part in sporting activities by a person other than a non-profit making organisation • printed matter e.g. newspapers, brochures, leaflets, programmes, maps, catalogues, printed music (excluding books) • hairdressing services (Note: beauty treatments:- for example, facials, massages, nail treatments, tanning or sunbed services etc., remain liable at the 13.5% rate).
You can get a full list and details of the products and services affected from Revenue.ie
Another new feature that is now available on all listings is a simple Google map.
If you include your company’s physical address with your listing two things will happen:
The address and contact details will appear beside your listing
A little map will show up pinpointing where you are based on a map of Ireland
Since a picture speaks a thousand words .. or something I thought it best to illustrate this with a couple of examples of listings.
Here’s how the address and contact details get displayed:
And here’s how the map will show it :
But what might be more useful if you’re promoting your site is to make it stand out that bit more on the listings, so any listing which has an address with it gets an extra icon:
Hopefully people will find this new feature useful – let us know!
Due to a technical issue the main armchair.ie site has been offline since the November 2010. Basically the site’s backend wasn’t compatible with a newer version of PHP and simply ceased functioning.
I had been hoping to get it back online quickly, but between my workload with other projects, Christmas etc., it simply did not happen.
So what’s happening now?
At present there is “a” site online and I am in the process of recreating all the previous categories and sub-categories.
All the links that were in the original site have been imported to the new backend, but it’s going to take me a few evenings (or longer) to get them all back into the actual site.
What is new?
The new backend is probably a lot more flexible, both for the site administrators, shop owners (links) and the public.
You will be able to submit your physical address and contact details with a listing now. If you provide your address it *should* display a Google map.
So if you run an Irish site selling online then please do submit it for inclusion!
The volcanic eruptions in Iceland have been impacting flights throughout Europe for the last few days.
Unfortunately airplanes are also used to transport goods, so An Post is reporting severe issues. Royal Mail doesn’t appear to be as badly affected, but they’re still reporting issues.
So how long is this likely to continue?
Will businesses have to revert to other means of shipping to satisfy their clients?
Recent Comments