A market town that has kept its independents, which means a lot of one-and-two-person businesses running on a card terminal, a laptop and a WiFi connection that has to hold up on a Saturday.
£45 an hour, quoted first. Hitchin is a planned visit rather than a drop-everything one, but most things get fixed remotely the same day, and when a visit is needed it is booked properly instead of promised vaguely.
A town of independent shops, studios and small practices has different problems to an office park.
Almost always the network rather than the terminal, and almost always at the worst possible moment. A card reader sharing congested WiFi with customer phones will fail intermittently in a way that looks like the bank's fault. Putting it on its own connection, ideally wired, ends it. See networks.
Very common, and worth fixing on two counts: the till slows down when the shop is full, and anyone in the doorway is on the same network as the machine holding your takings. Separating them is free and takes twenty minutes.
Much of central Hitchin is listed or period, and you cannot always run cable where you would like. That constrains the answer and it is why quoting WiFi for a Market Place unit over the phone does not work — it needs looking at.
A lot of Hitchin independents are entirely dependent on footfall and a Facebook page. A page with your prices, hours and a phone number is what turns a search into a visit. Sites start at £245.
The machine that runs the shop is usually a normal laptop with no backup and nobody else who knows the password. Getting that one machine backed up and documented is the most valuable hour available.
For anyone invoicing or quoting, mail landing in a customer's spam folder is lost money. It is nearly always missing SPF, DKIM and DMARC records rather than the mailbox. See Microsoft 365.
Hitchin is about twenty-five minutes from Wigmore, so it is straight about how this works: remote first. Most software faults are fixed the same day over a secure session without anyone travelling, which is faster for you than waiting for a van anyway.
When hands are genuinely needed — cabling, an access point, a card terminal, a machine that will not boot — the visit is booked for a time that suits the shop rather than squeezed in. Retail hours are the point: nobody wants an engineer at 11am on a Saturday.
Letchworth, Ickleford and Offley are covered on the same terms.
For a shop, the highest-value first job is usually the boring one: find out what you actually have, get the one critical machine backed up, and split the customer WiFi off the till. That is an afternoon and it prevents most of the calls that follow.
Same rate, same person, same standard as SG4’s neighbours in Luton. Nothing is a Hitchin-only or a Luton-only service.
Boot failures, slow machines, screens and failing drives.
Read moreCoverage that reaches the whole building, designed not guessed.
Read moreFor offices too small for an IT department.
Read moreGetting files back, then making sure it cannot happen twice.
Read moreEmail on your own domain that arrives instead of landing in junk.
Read moreSites and shops, from £245.
Read moreLogos in every format you will actually be asked for.
Read moreYes, but honestly: most things get fixed the same day remotely, which is quicker than waiting for anyone to drive over. Where a visit is genuinely needed it is booked for a time that suits you rather than promised vaguely. It is about twenty-five minutes each way.
Usually the network rather than the terminal. A card reader sharing WiFi with a shop full of customer phones will fail intermittently, especially when you are busiest. Giving it its own connection, wired if the building allows it, is normally the whole fix.
No. It slows the till down when the shop is full, and it puts anyone within range on the same network as the machine handling your money. Separating guest from business traffic costs nothing and takes about twenty minutes.
It is a start, but you do not own it and it does not show your prices or hours where people look. A simple site on your own domain starts at £245 and it is the difference between someone searching your name and finding you, or finding a directory listing with the wrong opening times.
Based in Luton, and out from there. The main page covers the whole catchment, or just ask if your town is not listed — the answer is usually yes.
Tell me what is playing up, or send me your web address. You get back one page: what is slow, what is insecure, and what Google cannot see. If the answer is that you do not need me, I will say so.