So lets kick off with why? Ok so……

For starters People use the Internet like they used to use the phone book.

Lets face it, if you need information about a service and a company, where is the first place you look? That’s right the internet!

Now almost everyone uses the Internet to get information – even local information. So be there or beware; people who are searching for a service will find other local businesses rather than yours.

A business website gives your business legitimacy.

People almost expect businesses to have their own websites, just as they used to expect businesses to have a real physical address.

Not having a business website raises questions in customers eyes. Are you a technological dinosaur? Do you really exist? Or are you a shoestring startup that you can’t even afford to do this? All things you don’t want people thinking about your business!

I know the first thing I do before visiting any establishment is an internet search. If the company does not have a website, I am skeptical. Lets skip to the next one that does and rather do business with them!

A business website gives you another marketing channel.

Having a business website gives you an automatic Internet presence.

Think of it as a billboard on the Net.

Instantly you have another chance to introduce people to your products and services and another way for people to find you.

Of course, how many eyes your billboard attracts will depend on your conscious marketing efforts to get people’s attention. I will talk about that in just a moment.

A business website gives you another opportunity for data collection and qualified leads.

Getting people to write their email addresses on pieces of paper and handing them in at a physical storefront is hard.

Getting people to type their email address into a box on a website is much, much easier – especially if they perceive that they’re getting something for it, such as a newsletter.

Once you have the email address, you have another way to reach your potential customer.

And it works! My clients have had amazing results with newsletters!

You know the magic contact forms you find on websites? Well if someone fills out yours on your website, you have a qualified lead right there. They have read about your business, understand your services and now want to get in touch! Much easier for them then picking up the phone!

So in essence … A website is now like a business card – a must-have for any business.

Think of your web site like an employee that never asks to be paid, never complains and promotes your business full time, 24/7. Brilliant!

So what can we do for a client at computer geek services?

First of all and most importantly we can give them an instant, professional, credible, internet presence. This will legistimise their business and create opportunities for brand new business.

Why should you use us? Easy,,

• we are qualified professionals with sofware engineering degree’s
• We are not just a pretty face! We do build websites that look amazing but also do useful things like interacting with your visitors. We can even automate entire business’s.
• We study design practises on an everyday basis and know what makes a visitor to your site leave or stay.
• We use the latest standards before they become mainstream so you can be sure your site will will have cutting edge technology.
• We build the site in a way so it is easy for google to visit and reference and therefore for people to find you!
• We do not cost the earth!
• Our customer service is frankly amazing. We aim to respond to any enquirey, question or problem within 2 hours or quicker if possible. We never just keep our clients guessing.
• We have a proven track record  in South Africa with businesses using our websites, applications and live payment systems we have developed and deployed. Check our portfolio.
• We know how to take advantage of all the free and cool ways to drive loads of lovely traffic to your new website. Lots of traffic means sales, sales means more money.

In effect your website will pay for it’s self many times over and some.

We are Internet marketing specialists,

• We can plug your website into Facebook taking advantage of its 500 million users.
• Fact, If facebook were a country it would be the biggest in the world.
• Fact, Facebook gets more hits per day then Google.
• Fact, We can help you take advantage of all that potential custom by plugging you directly in to facebooks API. With fan pages, share buttons, like buttons, facebook login systems.
• We know how Twitter works and how to take advantage of it to drive new visitors and business.
• We develop sites that google loves. Wanna be found? Then let Computer geek services build your site.
• We have an understanding of every trick in the book to get people to your site and get people to use you!

We build whole online commercially proven systems;

Only yesterday we completed an online payment solution and intergrated paypal for one of our clients – digitalelectronics.co.za. They took their first online payment the same day. Check their site which we made work commericaly.

We Build:

• Content Management Admin Systems
• Brochure Sites
• Corporate Professional Sites
• Digital Shops, Commercial grade online payment systems, shipping solutions and we have a massive understanding of how to make PayPal work for you in South Africa.
• Online Estate Agent, Estate Agency Property Listings
• Digital Auction house, maybe you fancy being the next ebay?
• Portals, directory services and information Centers
• Wiki Sites, Q&A Solutions.
• Social Networks just like facebook!
• Digital products and Music Download sites
• Custom coding Joomla/Virtuemart Configurations
• Custom WordPress coding and design
• Anything you can think of that will go online!

If you can think of it chances are we can build it, so break free of the normal design constrain results that other web companies present you with.

So when your thinking web design and web opportunities,

Think:

Computer Geek Services!

We love ecommerce, we love building ecommerce systems. Why? Well they are the future. A fully automated shop that can recieve orders and payments around the clock with little input from the vendor. Sure, they take a little while to set-up, stock and be given a visual impact. Sometimes they require a little investment in both time and money. There is alot of competition out there so it pays to have a shopping site that stands out and is very easy to use. Above all it should be backed up by reliable service and deliverys as promised!

However once it is built you can set it to work. Think of an ecommerce site like an employee that never asks to be paid, never complains and promotes your business full time, 24/7. Brilliant!

So a major decision to make when developing your Digital shop is what payment methods are you going to adopt? You need to accept Credit Cards, the tried and tested other methods of EFT (electronic fund transfer) and of course good old COD (cash on delivery). Being from the UK and in the past trading largley with Europe and America we have come to take Paypal for granted. It is very easy to slot into your site. You just need an account with PayPal, they give you an email address to use and you can recieve payments via a whole range of methods. It is secure, relativley cheap, trusted and ever so convienient. Above all it just “works” and this has been proven over and over again by millions of users worlwide.

PayPal in South Africa

So you can sign up for an account here > http://paypal.com/za

Why should I use PayPal? – PayPal enables South Africans to sell to PayPal’s global customer base of more than 81 million active accounts in 190 markets around the world and move the proceeds to their FNB accounts. (South Africa is the 190th country to get paypal accounts!)

This drastically lowers the barrier to entry for entrepreneurs to setup online stores and instantly start selling online. Bad news for online merchant providers like MyGate, VCS and even MWEB’s Safeshop.

Problems with PayPal in South Africa, how does it all work?

• Your paypal.com account will be based in US Dollars. Not too bad for people using it for international payments. If you are using ZAR as your primary currency then we can programme checkout systems to convert the final checkout amount into USD so PayPal can process the payment. Currently PayPal does NOT recognise ZAR as a trading currency!

• You have 30 days to transfer your money back to South Africa. You can’t keep the money in your Paypal.com account as a wallet … that would be in contravention of the Reserve Bank Regulations and FNB’s Terms of Service. You will be responsible for making sure the money comes back in time.

• Each transaction must be uniquely identified. Every detail about the sender, receiver and the transaction will be reported to the Reserve Bank.

• South Africans will not be getting the full Paypal.com experience. We can send and receive money but will not be able to use the buy-now buttons in South African Rands. This means that you can’t use Paypal.com on your website that focuses on a South African market. So you will have to use a second merchant gateway to handle ZAR transactions or get us to convert PayPal so it is useable in South Africa. This is a big disappointment. The biggest struggle  South Africans have is the fact that they need multiple payment gateways. Our biggest hope was that we could ditch everything else and use Paypal.com exclusively for our clients, very easy and clean but not to be for the moment I am afraid!

• FNB will be adding 1.5% onto the transaction value. This, coupled with Paypal.com’s 3.4% + R2.10 per transaction, takes us to almost 5% – which means that one of Paypal’s most attractive features – the low transaction fee – is negated for South Africans.

This is not the Paypal.com experience that the rest of the world enjoys. South Africa is governed by archaic Exchange Regulation that has been abandoned by the rest of the world after the Second World War. (Only 24 countries in the world still use Exchange Controls including China, Zimbabwe and North Korea). The introduction of Paypal.com through FNB to South Africans will only benefit a small handful of freelancers who can only receive payment from abroad. For the true Internet Business Owner, get some serious advise from Computer Geek Services before you decide on PayPal and your Paygate systems!

For a small fee we can make paypal work for you in South Africa, ask the experts – Computer geek Services

We have tested it out and must say this new release is coming along nicely. It should not be long before this moves on to it’s first stable release. We love the Joomla CMS project. The software is well written modular and completely open source. All of this of course means that companies like (Computer Geek Services) us can develop custom solutions for this CMS for our clients. We love making our clients happy with intelligent and clean solutions that will make their business even more streamlined and automated.

So why are we so excited about the new release of Joomla 1.6? Well we have written many an application (Recruitment center modules, Social network mods, Ecommerce plugins) for this software. We know it like an old friend from university! We have also written complete templates and based whole websites on this CMS software. Infact we would go as far to say there is not much we can’t do when it comes to Joomla!

Never used Joomla?

The Joomla Project, a free, award-winning PHP-based content management system that enables users to build websites and powerful online applications, today announced the beta release of Joomla 1.6. Designed to offer enhanced site control and a more polished user experience, Joomla 1.6 will deliver a variety of new tools to improve website management and access, a more robust organizational structure for content control, and various other user-experience improvements throughout the software.

Joomla’s ease-of-use and extensibility has made it the most popular and downloaded open source website software in the industry today (it has been downloaded more than 16 million times). It is used for everything from small personal websites to the backend management for some of the largest enterprises and highest traffic sites on the Web, including sites operated by Citibank, IHOP, Harvard University, the Baltimore Police Department, Linux.com, Smart Car of America, The Guggenheim Museum, and many more.

Key Features in Joomla 1.6:

New Access Control System – Allows site administrators control over who can view and manage content.
Unlimited Depth Organizational Model – Gives site administrators and content creators user-defined category levels that allow for the creation of a category tree with as many or as few levels for organizing articles and other content as needed.
One-Click Extension Updates – Allows users to keep sites secure and controlled by simplifying the process of updating extensions.
Semantic XHTML Layouts – Provides a better baseline for content presentation.

In addition, developers and implementers will enjoy the new ability Joomla 1.6 provides in allowing extensions to be built with granular control and permissions. This will make it easier to create more advanced, enterprise-focused applications and extensions for Joomla. Furthermore, there are numerous improvements in areas like code reuse, and considerable success in ensuring the stability of application programming interfaces via unit testing.

“With the release of 1.6, The Joomla Project is transitioning the development process to a more iterative, time-based release cycle,” said Louis Landry, a lead developer and community member of The Joomla Project. “This new approach will help streamline the production of new code and better ensure timely releases around product updates. I’m very excited about the beta release and look forward to working with the entire community as we continue to refine the system.”

Well we can not wait to be developing for the new system!

Speak soon,

Matt – CGS & GGS Digital – Web Engineers.

We are still busy writing new content for this new site and it will continue to grow over the coming week. We also have new projects to add to our portfolio, so check back often!

We plan to write many interesting articles for the field of web design and coding. Lots of new exciting things are happening with the event of HTML 5, the now widley used CCS3 and the new anticipated Joomla 1.6 release. This all means, cleaner code, even more useful applications and stunning looking online web systems. We very much look forward to implementing these new technologies as widley as possible. In the meantime please check out our site and if you have a project in mind please get in touch with us!

Chow for now,, Matt.