Category: Business

The Genius Computing team have been working hard since the pandemic hit. Trying to help businesses across the UK improve their digital presence has been tasking. We’ve not been as active as we would have like to have been on these posts as all hands have been on deck. We’ve done this to ensure our clients were being serviced before us! Now we’ve got a bit of breathing space we’d like to tell you a bit about one of our recent projects. This Website Development Project for Blazed UK was done just before Christmas – read bout it below.

The Blazed UK team had a website created for them when they first established the business back in 2016. However, technology has changed a lot since then. Website Development is now so powerful you can give your customers a very attractive, and compelling shop window right at their fingertips. Make use of this fantastic opportunity!

Website Development – What did we do?

When Blazed UK came to us, we were given their current website details, and a logo. From their, we took the logo and vectorised it immediately. This allowed the Blazed UK team to work on their marketing materials whilst we begun designing. Our team had great fun being able to explore without restraint on these designs. We worked closely with Nathan to ensure that we captured his vision for the brand, and we like to think we’ve shown everyone just how great the brand is with the new website! Both of the websites for their Clothing and CBD stores were pushed through our pipeline as efficiently as possible to bring Nathan’s vision straight to his customers’ fingertips. Why don’t you check them both out for yourself and let us know what you think?

We like to ensure that our clients can have total trust in our team to deliver great results. We do our utmost to achieve those results, but we also work with our clients to maintain these results. If you or your company are looking for Website Development services, then give us a shout!

Last month we shared a blog post for Website Design & Development. As we said in that post, we were in the process of running through bespoke website development creations for a couple of clients. We have now completed those websites and have created case study pages for you to see! If you’d like to take a look at our latest work, you can find it here: Our Work

The Real Lesvos team came to us back in January with a set of designs that they had drafted up by another designer. We worked alongside the other designer to turn their set of print-ready designs into website compatible designs. This project has been a fun one for the Genius Computing team, and we have lots more planned for these guys. Below is a snippet of how their website turned out:

The Caterpillar team have not had a website up until now, and decided that they would like to have an online presence. We designed this one from scratch in house and needless to say the client loves the work that has been produced. Here is an example of some of the mobile responsive content:

We like to ensure that our clients can have total trust in our team to deliver great results. Not only do we do our utmost to achieve those results, but we work with the client to maintain these results on an ongoing basis. If you or your company are looking for Website Design & Development services, then give us a shout!

In this post, we’re going to look at the different types of backups, the pros/cons of each, and whether you should be doing them. We will also give you a small run through of how you set these types of backups up.

On-site backups

If you have ever done any backups up to this point, this is most likely where you are. On-site backups can be something as simple as backing up your important files to a USB drive. You could also be carrying out full machine backups to a large External Hard Drive. These are great methods if you want to keep costs down and be in control of where your data is held.

With Windows 10, backing up to an external hard drive is simple. To do this, go to the Start Menu > Settings > Update & Security > Backup. From here you can choose to add a drive, so make sure that you have one connected. The process is fairly simple and easy to follow.

The problem with these types of backups, is that you have to remember to do this yourself. Sometimes you may forget to do this, and only remember when it is too late and have lost the files. The other down side is that if the hard drive or USB breaks, your backup file is lost unless you pay for expensive professional data recovery services. These sorts of issues do not exist on cloud backups, which is what makes them a great alternative.

Cloud backups

Cloud backups have come a very long way in the past decade. There have always been big players that had seamless cloud backups however they always came at an extortionate price.

Over the past couple of years, these technologies have advanced enough so that smaller enterprises can offer solutions at much more affordable pricing. Most cloud services that you may already be using include backups within their service such as Microsoft 365. Even the free version of Microsoft OneDrive gives you 5GB of space for free. This allows those of you who don’t have a large amount of data to back up free of charge. For those of you that are likely to break past this limit, it is worth looking at cloud backup services such as iDrive.

iDrive is a very cost effective cloud backup service, which at the time of writing offers you 5TB of backup space for under £40/year. This is a huge amount of space that is more than enough for most everyday users, even if you store a lot of photos and videos. One of the best things about cloud backup services like iDrive is that they run on a schedule so that you don’t even have to remember after initially setting it up. It will automatically back up your files at a certain time. If the machine is off at that time, it will back up as soon as it is next switched on.

Final thoughts

For those of you that require the odd file backed up, then a USB drive will be sufficient for you. Make sure that you check they are working correctly on a monthly basis. Otherwise you’ll be hit with a shock if it breaks in your time of need! For the rest of you, I would definitely recommend iDrive. It is extremely cost effective and means that you can just forget about it. If the service fails at any time, it will automatically notify you to let you know.

If you have any queries about the backup options, please do not hesitate to contact us so we can assist.

Website Design and Development has become all too important for any business, especially since the Covid-19 pandemic hit the UK back in December 2019. With many of us spending a lot more time at home, it has become essential for your business to have a great digital presence. There are many ways of doing this such as social media, websites, email marketing etc.

At Genius Computing, we wanted to show you how we can help, and what better way than our own business! We have our brand on all major platforms; Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and our own website. We designed a brand that could be used across all platforms with very little extra effort.

Website Design

To design our brand, we use an online design and collaboration tool. We use this same tool with all of our clients. It allows you to easily see your designs come to life, and prototype without any development work being carried out. From the photo below, you can see the work that goes into the designs!

Website Development

Once we’re happy with the designs, we get to work on the development of the website. For most of our clients, we do this on WordPress to make it more cost effective. It is also easier to maintain the content within the website. However, for any website, you want to make sure that it is secure, and the software is up to date. You also want to ensure the content contained within the website is up to date. The process of taking the website from designs to a working staging site takes about 1-2 weeks depending on the complexity of the site. You very quickly be able to see your websites home page come to life like ours did here:

We are currently working with a few of our clients to go through this exact process. The whole process of Website Design and Development can take between 2-4 weeks, depending on how complex the website is. As soon as we complete their websites, we will do a case study for each of them! By doing a case study we can show yourselves the art of the possible. Also it is helping to raise the profile of the website. If you see a case study, please take a minutes to read about the client visit their website. If you would like any information about how we can help you, please do not hesitate to contact us.

We are delighted to welcome Rodel Amancio, who has an extensive knowledge of PHP, to our permanent team as a Developer. Our team is growing! We have worked with Rodel for many years and are overjoyed to have him on board.

Rodel is bringing over 10 years of experience working within the development industry. With his knowledge of PHP and JavaScript, Genius Computing can push clients further with a lower budget. We can make use of WordPress’ core, and make bespoke themes/plug-ins.

Due to COVID-19, we have had many customers wishing to go digital. We believe that all businesses should have an online presence, regardless of the pandemic. It exposes your business to a much wider audience, who you may not have normally come across. So far this year, we have helped more than 10 businesses get up and running online. Whether this has been building a website from scratch, or improving their current one. Now that our team is growing, we can offer this service to many more of you.

If any of the following statements can be applied to your business, then I assure you we can help:

• You require a website
• Currently have a website
• Need to sell products online
• You require IT support

We provide many services to clients across the UK, from IT Support, to web design, development and hosting. We also help with migrating e-mail from cheap providers to the likes of Office 365 and G Suite.

If your business needs help with website development, or any other IT services mentioned (or not mentioned) then get in touch with us. Even if we have not mentioned a service you require, let us know what it is and if we cannot help directly, we are sure to know which direction to point you in.

We like to ensure that our clients receive the best service possible, especially with our office 365 email migration service. If you choose our team to migrate your e-mails from your current provider, we will ensure a very smooth process. We have carried this process out countless times for clients over the years and have the process perfected.

We recommend Office 365 as it is an extremely powerful and secure e-mail provider. It also gives you a huge amount of tools for administration and monitoring. The license pricing starts from £3.00 per user. Depending on which license you choose, it will include optional Office Software. You can find more information on the pricing here.

With this service, we audit your current environment and then give you an estimated time to complete. You can then choose your preferred migration date and we will work to your dates. All of your mail is migrated from your old provider, so you need not worry about mail going missing. You will also not lose any mail whilst your e-mails are being migrated to the new service, with a seamless switchover to Office 365.

Once your e-mails have been migrated, we will also support all of your users remotely to help them get all of their devices connected to their new mail service.

If you would like to here more about how we can help you with our Office 365 Email Migration Service or have any questions about the service at all, then do not hesitate to get in touch.

This is a question that is asked a lot, and we would like to ensure that a detailed answer is given. The short answer is that you get what you pay for. However, this doesn’t necessarily mean that a cheap website is bad. Rather than asking ‘How much does a website cost?’, we believe you should ask ‘How much value will a website bring?’. For example, if you would like an online shop which could grow your business tremendously, then it is worth spending more money to do it properly first time. On the other hand, if you are just creating a blog or brochure website, then there are plenty of cheaper ways of achieving this.

Brochure Websites

These are the common and cheaper websites which gives your business an online platform for customers to connect with you. These websites usually consist of 5-10 pages and give customers information about your company, offering ways to contact you. Some companies starting out may want to use a free/cheap website builder service such as Wix. This can get you online for an extremely low cost. The problem with these websites is that they are usually built without thoughts as to how a user would interact with a website. You could enlist a web developer for this sort of website for as little as £195. This would ensure things are set up correctly, allowing for more customers to connect with your business. Depending on your requirements and how bespoke you would like your website, this figure increase quite quickly to £1000’s.

E-Commerce Websites

These website are more expensive due to the complexities of setting them up. There is a lot more work involved in them, however there are still options for pricing. If you feel like you are tech savvy, then you could at creating a Shopify website using templates available online. This can be a very quick and easy way of getting your shop available online to customers. However, if you would like something more professional, and know that you can depend on a web developer should any problems arise, then you probably want to enlist a web developer. These sorts of websites will cost you a minimum of £995 to get started with a web developer. Depending on how bespoke it needs to be can easily reach £10,000+.

Final Thoughts – How much does a website cost?

Hopefully from reading this blog, you understand that the price of a website isn’t as simple as the price you pay. The ‘price’ you pay should prove value and return on investment for your company. Companies look to explain the pricing structure, such as household quotes, so take a look at what they say too. No matter what you are looking for, we would love to help you take your business online. Whether that is through our own services, or advising you what options are available to you. Get in touch with us now for a no obligation quote or advice on moving forward.

Having a WordPress website created for you, or creating one yourself, can be an extremely cost effective way of giving your business an online presence. However, one thing that is sometimes forgotten is to continue managing your WordPress website. The main reasons why this is so important to keep up, is for the security and the speed of your website. There is a great article that explains in more depth why it is so important which you can find here.

Managing your WordPress website – Security

Security is the most important reason for you to continue managing your WordPress website. Having out of date themes and plug-ins makes your website extremely vulnerable to any malicious attacks. The longer your website is out of date, the more at risk your website is to these attacks. Keeping your themes and plug-ins up to date isn’t always a hard task, however sometimes problems can occur. When the plug-ins or themes aren’t compatible once they have been updated. This is why it is always leave the management of your website to a website developer that will be able to fix any issues should they occur once the plug-ins have been updated. You should be looking to ensure your plug-ins are update once per week, or at the very least once per month. This will ensure that your website’s risk to malicious attacks is kept to a minimum.

Managing your WordPress website – Speed

Speed is yet another reason for you to continue managing your WordPress website. By updating your themes and plug-ins, you will allow them to make use of the most up to date technologies available.This will usually in turn make your website work faster and more smoothly than leaving your website to go out of date. It will also give you the latest functionality available to you at the time.

How can we help?

Here at Genius Computing, we offer our customers a managed hosting plan for £50/month exVAT. This plan includes the hosting of your website on a fast VPS server, weekly updates, weekly backups, and pro-active monitoring. We can be managing your WordPress website whilst you spend your time managing the business. If you would like any further information, please do not hesitate to get in touch.

Genius Computing provide PPC marketing services for Funeral Directors and various other industries over the industries. After reading this post, you will have more understanding about what PPC marketing is. You will be able to spot a company that is setting unrealistic expectations when offering your business PPC marketing services.

What is PPC Marketing?

PPC stands for Pay Per Click, and it is exactly what it says on the tin! Whether you are getting PPC services for Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Bing, or any other site, you are not paying for a sale of a product or service but simply a click from a potential customer directed towards your content. PPC Marketing is a great way to get an immediate increase in traffic to your content, which over time you can mould to be more cost effective, more relevant to the customer, and drive potential sales for your business.

Can PPC Marketing for Funeral Directors get me instant sales?

One of the most common misconceptions about PPC marketing is that you are guaranteed to see an immediate increase in sales. This is a sales line that a lot of untrustworthy marketing companies will say to grab your attention and get you to sign on the dotted line without any proof of return on investment. These companies charge a fortune to initially set up with a large monthly fee, and the reason for this is that they know that they don’t produce the results of their sales pitch which is just smoke and mirrors, therefore they have to make their money from you ASAP.

There is certainly no guarantee with any PPC marketing that you will get instant / immediate sales. The only guarantee is that you will be getting an increase in traffic to your content. If you are looking for PPC services and a company is trying to charge a large chunk upfront, then you should be wary. Companies that offer a smaller set up fee, and a reasonable monthly maintenance fee are likely to be looking to maintain a long relationship with you. This means that the company is more likely to be spending time each month making relevant changes to your accounts to ensure a constant increase in efficiency of your spend and keeping ahead of your competition.

Is PPC marketing for Funeral Directors right for me?

PPC marketing is right for anyone that is running a business that has a digital presence. In your business plan you should have allocated an annual marketing budget. There are many ways that you can use this budget: adverts on the radio, newspaper, flyering, PPC etc! With the ever increasing usage Google searching, we would always recommend spending a proportion of your budget on PPC marketing. If you are hiring a PPC company, ensure you are happy with the reporting of results they will give you.

PPC marketing for Funeral Directors is challenging compared to some other industries. When the time comes to require your services, a family will normally contact one of you that they already know. I strongly believe that the younger generations are pushing away from using services just because a family member has before. They are more likely to carry out a google search to find someone local to them. A company that offers a reasonably priced service, and is available at their fingertips via their mobile device / computer.

How can Genius Computing help?

Genius Computing are able to get you up and running with your PPC marketing for a monthly maintenance charge. This charge covers the initial set up, and ongoing monitoring/maintenance. For those of you who already have a web developer, we can work with them to ensure the best results. Otherwise, we can help with any changes that you may require. We have a great company at hand that focuses solely on Funeral Directors, https://www.funeraldirectorwebsites.co.uk/

If you would like any further information, please do not hesitate to Contact Us.

Welcome to Genius Computing. We are an award-winning IT Support company based in Newcastle upon Tyne, but we provide digital services across the United Kingdom.

Due to modern technology, it has become relatively pain-free to support you for your IT support requirements remotely. This not only saves time due to having an instant remote connection with a support agent, but it also means that you can be anywhere in the world to receive support.

For local businesses, we provide on-site support for any issues that cannot be resolved remotely.

Not only do we provide IT Support in Newcastle, but we also provide many other digital services such as website design, development, hosting and maintenance. You can see some of the work we have been a part of on our portfolio page

We have partnered with many great services such as Carbonite for backup services. We also have Digital Ocean for website hosting services, Cloud Market for your licensing requirements, and Bitdefender for your security. Due to these partnerships, we are able to provide a high class set of services at an extremely reasonable rate.

Websites

In terms of website development and hosting, we provide a range of options for all types of clients and budgets. We handle very simple WordPress sites all the way up to fully custom websites built to specification. There are no size projects that we are not capable of handling. If you have a project, get in touch and send us your brief so we can help you implement it.

We’re here to help, whatever your requirements. As you will see from our testimonials, we are able to cater for all types and sizes of businesses. We will always have a smile on our face knowing we are making your work life easier!

IT Support Newcastle

Get in touch with us now to find out how we can assist you with any of your IT requirements.