21 Aug Getting to know how to put a business online
21 Aug, 2017
The Smart Women project is off to a great start. The summer saw many partners busy working to finish the curriculum for the modules. This gives potentials users an idea of the structure of the training course. The project will start to be piloted in a few months.
The project aims to reach out to women who have a business idea, or perhaps an existing business that could benefit from bringing that business online. Online businesses help reach more potential customers and clients, and allow for businesses to expand cross-border while staying in the same location. At the moment 17% of European businesses are online, and half of those sell cross border. Integrating of digital technology by EU businesses are among the lowest indicators on the Digital Economy and Society Index. There is a lot of work to be done by European businesses to take advantage of the digital age.
There are five modules planned for the course, ranging in themes from planning your business, promoting your business, creating digital content, online security and e-commerce. The modules will cover themes that will give guidance to what steps are needed to make a business online. This includes setting up a website and social media pages to reach new users, integrating a payment system, and managing accounts.
This project has information relevant to everyone with an entrepreneurial spirit. Smart Women however targets women entrepreneurs for its pilot project. This is used to address the gender gap in employment. For example, Malta has the biggest workforce gender gap in Europe, with 81.4% of men employed, but only 53.6% of women employed, resulting in a 27.8% difference in employment rate between the genders. In this context, the Smart Women project aims to help bridge this gap by targeting women to bring their businesses online, or if the women selected to take part in this project.
Interested in this project? Then visit the website, the I-LINC community page and like @SmartWomenEU on Facebook and twitter.