Google has launched a new initiative to get SA small and medium-sized businesses online. Called Woza Online, it wants to allow businesses to create an online presence by building a website with minimal effort.

Google launched the initiative in Pretoria on Thursday in conjunction with the department of trade & industry, mobile operator Vodacom and the Human Resources Development Council.

City of Tshwane councillor Subesh Pillay, a member of mayoral committee for economic development and city planning, says the small and medium enterprise sector accounts for 80% of global economic growth and is crucial to achieving SA’s job creation goals.

Pillay says part of the Tshwane’s “Smart City” strategy involves speeding up the roll out of fibre-optic networks, which it hopes will drive down the cost of connectivity and increase access in underserviced areas.

Google country manager Luke Mckend says the role improved Internet penetration in SA is felt by business. For small businesses, creating an online presence is often difficult because of time and cost constraints. Mckend says the project is meant to help remove barriers to entry.

Google estimates there are 8m active Internet users in SA and new international cables landing on SA shores, combined with an increasingly technologically savvy population, means that being online is become much more important for SA business.

Woza Online offers companies a free .co.za domain name and a free website, which Google SA says can be set up in about 45 minutes. Users need to sign up for a Google account.

The business site builder prompts users to create a custom subdomain. At present, Web addresses take the form companyname.wozaonline.co.za but the service will support country-level domains in due course and the first 10 000 businesses to sign up for the service will receive a .co.za domain for free for the first year.

Users of the service will also have access to training materials and workshops as well as free online support via Google chat and e-mail. Google has launched similar initiatives in 23 countries. These include Kenya and Nigeria, each of which saw more than 20 000 businesses signing up within two months of the service launching.

Users are prompted to input essential information about their business such as contact information, shipping destinations and operating hours, and they can submit their site to Google Places should they wish to.

Google SA business development manager Bryan Nelson says a growing number of people are accessing the Internet using mobile devices. Woza Online has been designed to support mobile devices by default, and dynamically converts contact and mapping information for mobile platforms.

Mckend says the “simplicity” of the service means that those with minimal technical expertise or experience of the Internet should still be able to use and benefit from the service.

Google SA says it hopes to see as many as 100 000 new websites online in SA within the next year.

The company won’t reveal the cost of the initiative, saying it is difficult to quantify. — Craig Wilson, TechCentral