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How many people are visiting my website from their smart phone?

The proportion of people visiting websites on their smart phone is increasing quickly and looks to continue upwards.  For some Rocketspark customers this is more than 30% of their total website traffic.  Do you know what proportion of your website traffic are visiting on a smart phone?  If your website is connected up with Google Analytics, it's easy to find. First, log in to Google Analytics. Once logged in, open the Audience tab and click Mobile.  Then you can see website traffic broken...

How to build your own website using a DIY website builder in 7 steps

So, you want to build your own website but you don’t know how? DIY website builders exist to allow folks like you—the non-technical, non-professional hoi polloi—to go solo in creating a decent website. But if you’ve never done it before, the prospect and the process can still seem complicated and overwhelming. ...

First impressions matter: why your website should appeal to Capt. Kirk, not Spock

How long does it take for someone to decide they like—or don’t like—your website? 50 milliseconds. That’s 0.05 seconds. 1/20th of a second. Faster than the blink of an eye. That’s what researchers at Carleton University (Canada) found when asking volunteers to rate websites after being given split-second glimpses. In other words, experiments have shown researchers what painful experience has already taught every goofy metal-mouthed, four-eyed teenager with a crush... ...

SEO Guide

We’ve written a fair amount on the subject of SEO and all things related. So, we thought we’d put these all together in one easy to find place. ...

Web video: why it matters, when it works and how to do it

Chances are, you’ve watched an online video today. According to Digital Sherpa, the average internet user watches 32.2 videos per month—more than one a day. In fact, one-third of all internet activity is video viewing. The internet is becoming—nay, has become—a videographic medium. Is your website keeping pace? Creating videos for your business’s website might sound like a lot of work and, admittedly, video production takes more time/money than simply writing something. But, used well...

The new Rocketspark website builder is here

We’ve got some exciting news: we’ve just launched a brand-new version of our website builder and we think it’s pretty cool. Now you—yes, you—can create a DIY website that is drop-dead gorgeous. In response to extensive customer feedback, this update: introduces sleek, designer templates (phwoar!), allows you to tweak and customise a lot (hubba-hubba!), and showcases stunning images (ah-oooo-gah!). We’ve always been about beautifully simple websites; now we’ve made ...

Blogging for business: 8 principles for writing a blog that gets more web traffic

One of the hottest—and in our experience, most effective—marketing strategies for your business website is writing a blog. That’s why we highlight to our customers the importance of having a blog. And yet, for many people, writing a blog is a daunting prospect. I mean, where do you start?? Here. You start here. That’s because, in this blog post, we’ll teach you how to write a blog—one that generates more traffic for your website. ...

Link Building for Dummies - Part 3: Create Your Own Backlinks

Asking others for links—the subject of our second post in this series—may well work, but it puts you at the mercy of webmasters who, frankly, may not give two hoots about your link building efforts. But there are ways where you can take matters into your own hands and do the backlinking yourself. The way to do this is to get out there on the web, creating content for other websites and then linking back, carefully and strategically, to your site. ...

Link Building for Dummies - Part 2: Natural Link Building

Sure, link building may important but that doesn’t mean it’s only for professionals. With a little time investment, you can start link building yourself. In our first post we looked at the “what” of link building; in this post we’re concentrating on the “how”. ...

Link Building for Dummies - Part 1: What is it?

So you’ve got a website—great—but how do people get there? Digital marketers Conductor recently found that, if your website is like most, close to 64% of your website visitors get there via “organic” search engine results (as opposed to paid search results). So while some people will get there by clicking on a link and others will get there by typing your web address directly into their web browser, the majority come via Google and similar sites. No surprise then that an entire indust...

How do I get a .nz domain name? Can I get a .nz domain name?

.nz domain names have just become an option in New Zealand.  Unlike .co.nz, .net.nz etc it is a shorter extension like rocketspark.nz rather than rocketspark.co.nz....

Rocketspark is 5 years old

Five years is a great milestone for a business.  There’s still plenty to do so we’re not getting too sentimental but we thought you may find some of our key learnings to date interesting and possibly even helpful in your own ventures. ...

Use a Business-Domain Email Address (Not a Generic One)

Is your email address driving away customers? It may seem innocuous and trivial but if your email address looks unprofessional, you could be losing customers. And you won’t even know it, because they won’t have contacted you in the first place. ...

Rocketspark’s hosting: how we keep your data safe

Updated Jul 2023...

Built-in SEO: How Canonical URL Helps You Rank Higher Without You Even Trying

Getting noticed in Google is tricky business. Turbo-boosting your website so that it ranks highly in search engines is called search engine optimisation (SEO), and a lot of us can find SEO pretty daunting. Ranking well in search engines takes time and effort but we aim to provide many built-in SEO features to make sure you have a great foundation for your SEO efforts. Even if you never lift a finger, at least you know that some stuff is taken care of automatically. Take, for instance, a lit...

Why Your Buttons Should Have Just One Line of Text

Read this. See? It worked. A short, snappy instruction and you followed it. You’re now reading this blog post. There are some imperatives we really want our website visitors to follow through on. For those things, we use buttons. A button isn’t just a link; it’s a flashy, shapely, alluring link that mellifluously whispers “click me”. Like this: ...

New Feature: Event Tracking in Google Analytics

Are you on board with Google Analytics yet? No? Believe us: it’s totally worth checking out. It’s a great web analytics tool. Rocketspark customers can use it to get detailed data on how visitors are using the site. To find out what you’re missing, take a gander at our introduction to Google Analytics. Yes? Good news! We’ve added event tracking to the already-impressive range of Analytics’ capabilities available to Rocketspark clients. If you’re serious about maximising conversions t...

WordPress vs. Rocketspark CMS

It’s the battle of the platforms. Two contenders will duke it out to see who reigns supreme as the best content management system (CMS). In the red corner: WordPress. In the blue corner: Rocketspark. Let’s get ready to rumble!...

Favicon: What It Is and How to Create One

Favicon. The word sounds faintly like emoticon or bestie, something from a world inhabited by giggly teenagers texting their BFFs (“u r my most favicon lol!!!! xx”). But it’s not. A favicon is actually a handy little feature for your website. And we do mean little. ...

What is Google Analytics?

Ever wished you could watch over a customer’s shoulder while they use your website? Well, you can (without being creepy about it). It’s called Google Analytics, an extremely powerful tool that collects and organises statistics about visitors’ usage of your website. It’s a bit like the book/film Moneyball. It’s about how one of Major League Baseball’s dud teams became one of the best. How? Statistics. Traditionally, baseball teams relied on a lot of guesswork to make their decisions....

SEO Basics (Part 3): How to do SEO to get higher search rankings?

You’ve learnt what Rocketspark can do you for your search engine optimisation (SEO) in part 2—now it’s over to you! In this final post in our three-post blog series about SEO, we’ll be showing you how to do SEO yourself. Here’s a few tricks of the trade, so that your site ranks well in Google. ...

SEO Basics (Part 2): How Rocketspark helps you rank higher

So now that you know what search engine optimisation (SEO) is (see SEO Basics Part 1: What is SEO - can I do my own SEO), it’s time to look at the finer details of how SEO actually functions. In the second in this three-post series, we’re looking at how Rocketspark can help you with your website’s SEO. SEO can be a lot of work. But if your web platform has the right technical foundations, you have a big head start because a lot of the initial hard work has already been done for you. Just ...

SEO Basics (Part 1): What is SEO? Can I do my own SEO?

You might’ve heard of search engine optimisation (“SEO” for short)—but what is it? SEO is about getting more people to your website by being able to find you easily in search engines like Google, Yahoo or Bing. The aim of the game is to optimise your site so that it ranks well—ideally high up on page one—for relevant search results, so that ultimately people click through to your website.  This is part one of a three-part series of blog posts introducing the idea of SEO and explain...

How to get set up on Google Places for Business

Want more customers for zero dollars and just five minutes’ work? (Thought so.) Google Places for Business is an easy way to make sure your business shows up any time someone searches locally for your product or service, putting your location, phone number, and store hours right at their fingertips. Take a looksie at our new support post on how to sign up to Google Places - it’s free and fast. ...

How to lay out an about us page

There’s no doubt that website about us pages are important but what are the tricks of the trade to make sure you’ve got an about us page that gets results? ...