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Taking control of your Header—Introducing: Full-width Header, Header Overlay, Header Button, and Blank Template

Gone are the days when you needed to start building a website from a pre-designed template. Now with the new Blank Template option, you can start afresh on a blank canvas where the header isn’t tied to a pre-designed template. You can have beautiful full-width headers that utilise the full width of the browser and choose different header layouts, getting your creative juices flowing. Design freedom is further granted with the introduction of the Header Overlay with the first Stack below Header...

How to use line height and letter spacing effectively in web design

Line height and letter spacing are equally as important as typeface when it comes to making written content look good. In fact, if text is hard to read and not broken down into manageable chunks it can distract from the content all together, decreasing engagement and confidence in website visitors....

Two new integrations to streamline your shipping—Starshipit & eShip

As an online store owner, the process of printing address labels, packing slips, courier barcodes, booking pickups, and sending orders can take up a lot of time.  Rocketspark has now joined forces with Starshipit, to provide Rocketspark merchants with a direct integration where order details are sent automatically to Starshipit in a time-saving way to streamline the whole shipping process. If you’re a NZ Post customer, you can also connect eShip with your Rocketspark online store through...

Mailchimp wiz explains the importance of email marketing

Debbie Mills Robertson, email marketing, newsletter, online course planning and website creation specialist has owned three businesses and worked in a lot of different industries over the years.  She has used her combined skills to become Task Diva, her current business and passion. Read on to learn how she has shaped her current business and why she believes email marketing is key for online marketing. Debbie ran her first business with her husband, a small construction company, but they e...

Varntige, normalising doing good

For one day out of every year a local Waikato business closes its normal doors in order to open themselves up to community work. When Chantelle Good started Varntige six years ago, it was with the simplest of missions: to help business owners be happier and less stressed while running their growing businesses. Chantelle said she didn’t get into business just because she wanted to make money.  “Having a business and a team, for me, is about providing a good service and being able to give...

Human Digital Supports Mathematics Education Non-Profit

Ben van Rooy, founder and director of Human Digital, enjoys giving back to the community. Human Digital is an experience design agency that helps organisations grow by attracting, converting, and retaining customers. In late 2020 Human Digital, a Rocketspark design partner, took on Mathematics for a Lifetime Charitable Trust as a pro-bono client.  “We’ve worked with Rocketspark for a few years now and we find the simple user interface and great customer support perfect for clients who w...

Learning, to give

A passion for learning, and the mutual benefit it brings, is the drive behind Les Huett’s community work. Empower Business & Accounting Solutions NZ Ltd (EBAS) team member Les Huett has developed various community sites in the past on a number of different platforms. These have included an amateur orchestra with a private area where orchestra members access their scores and a site for blind and partially sighted people that had an innovative navigation system that used voice prompts to guide p...

Giving, a beautiful thing for local Rocketspark Design Partner

When things get quiet around the Varntige office in Te Awamutu, the virtual assistant team doesn’t just sit around, they find someone to help. In April this year Rocketspark gifted each of its Design Partners, Varntige included, a lifetime Rocketspark website subscription to give away for free to a deserving not-for-profit organisation. Learn more about the Rocketspark Gift-it-forward initiative here. Varntige found a very well deserving candidate and went the extra mile making all of their de...

Where to find inspiration

Sometimes it can be hard to get inspired, writer's block or design fatigue can come at unexpected times. In this edition of Reel Talk with Jason Tiller, Rocketspark Head of Partnerships, we cover where you can find inspiration, and then, where you can find it, if you can’t find it in the first suggested places....

From grief stems life

A cemetery beautification project that grew out of one woman’s grief has spread seeds around the world.   Our in-house storyteller Kyra Piccione recently sat down with Rocketspark Design Partner, Tonia Hill, founder of Greenhouse Creative, to talk about a website project close to her heart; Flowers from Felix. Flowers from Felix is a giant community flower garden situated in Purewa Cemetery, the garden started with Miriama Tomms. “Miriama is a videographer and friend and we had bee...

How to rank in Google for multiple town locations

In a Formula One Grand Prix, there are 20 different drivers all competing for a podium top three finish. There is only one spot on the podium for first, one spot for second, and one spot for third. Just like with a Grand Prix, the top spot in Google search results gets a lot more attention than second and third and the podium finishers get much more attention than those further down the rankings....

Design partner creates business saving website

In the Mix, a bakery that started out selling at a local Auckland market, had one of the most fortuitous experiences with their website launching just days before the New Zealand lockdown of 2020.  Rocketspark Design Partner Tonia Reid, founder of Greenhouse Creative was a finalist in five different categories at Launch 2021, she ended up taking out Partner of the Year. One of the categories she was up for was Best Client Impact for the work she’d done with In the Mix. As a baking busines...

The benefits of creating a website strategy

Is your website design strategy a little light? Or do you need some fresh strategic insights?  You already know the value websites can provide and how, but maybe you’re having trouble knowing where to start with planning a really high impact website beyond just laying out content and pictures so it looks nice. With the help of one of our top design partners, and our own Rocketspark experts, let’s dive past the skin deep beautiful websites into the high impact substance that makes for an...

Branding key for Riverside Escapes

Trading the city for the far north was the best move Maggie Dalziel and Brooke Noonan could have made. The second best, for their business, was reaching out to Rocketspark Design Partner Natalie White, who gave them a new brand identity. Natalie (Nat), Creative Director at Magic fingers Graphics, worked with the couple on their business website for Riverside Escapes and was nominated for three different awards in relation to that work at the Rocketspark 2021 Launch Partner Awards. She won two of...

We’re in the market of marketing

A big part of Rocketspark is our story and how we tell it. That story is part of everything we do. We use it to give our customers the best experience possible when they’re on our website, social media platforms or using our products. One of the main drivers behind crafting that experience, and keeping it relevant, is the marketing team.  This team is made up of artistic designers, communication specialists, storytellers, analytical masterminds, partnership creators and product developers...

Australian web designer helps her community

Jill Vella, founder of Terramirra Press, says her love for the environment and connection push her to help her local community. Jill has helped two community groups of the last year by designing them websites for free and says she has another two currently underway. She was also a finalist in Rocketspark Community Good Award category at its annual awards earlier this year. The first volunteer based organisation that Jill helped was Nerrena/Tarwin Landcare, where she has been the secretary for qu...

The importance of connections

As much as it is about what you know, who you know can play a major part in a freelancer's business. In this edition of Reel Talk with Jason Tiller, Rocketspark Head of Partnerships, we cover what kind of connections you might need and why. How you make those connections and how you keep them....

The 10 most common web design mistakes to avoid

If you’re new to web design or are struggling to get your websites looking exceptional, while functioning well, there are some fundamental basic tweaks you can make for a better result. Read on to discover 10 common web design mistakes, and ways you can avoid them.  A great website is not only about having all the bells and whistles, it's knowing how to strategically and aesthetically place your content. A website needs to have really clear call-to-action prompts, that guide the visitor a...

Wintec students help local businesses online

A partnership between Wintec students and Rocketspark has seen 10 e-commerce sites built on the five-star platform, all for local Waikato business. Head of Partnerships, Jason Tiller, said Rocketspark was stoked that the partnership with Wintec had continued to grow since it began in 2020. “We are so happy Wintec is continuing to use Rocketspark as their learning platform, enabling students to get equipped with website design while helping the wider business community by having easy access to ...

How to get your blogs to rank higher in Google

Rocketspark Design Partner Sarah Pooley says trying to convince people that there’s value in blogging can be challenging. She’s tested blogs on her own website for a while now, proving their value for herself. Sarah is the founder of The Digital Doctor, a UK based digital agency. Her background is in digital marketing and was an account director for an agency for around 13 years before going out on her own in 2016....

Rocketspark Design Partners Gift-it-forward

Rocketspark announced at Launch 2021 that it would be giving every design partner a free not-for-profit website to give to an organisation of their choice, the initiative is called Gift-it-forward. We caught up with a few of our partners recently to see how they chose to give away their free website. Nikita Williams, General Manager and Senior Designer at Tauranga based Metro Marketing said they planned to find someone local. “One of our clients is The Kollective, they are a coworking space ba...

Varntige: 6 years, 50 websites, time to claim Gold

Te Awamutu based virtual assistant firm, Varntige, has been a Rocketspark design partner for almost four years now and they have officially become one of our Gold Partners. Chantelle Good, owner and founder of Varntige, said the team had a goal of reaching Gold Partner level before Rocketspark’s 2021 Launch Design Conference. “At 9.30pm the night before Launch I got an email saying you’re a gold partner and I was like woo! We’ve had this goal since last year and we just made it,” she s...

Rocketspark is officially a .nz domain registrar

New Zealand made award winning website builder Rocketspark is now also an official registrar for .nz domains, a pipe dream that the founders have had since starting out.To warrant becoming a .nz domain reseller, Rocketspark needed a high number of domains to justify the development resource required to develop the systems that needed to be in place.Rocketspark was originally a reseller of .nz web domains. To make this easy to understand, you can liken it to a clothing retailer who buys their clo...

A need to give back

A passion for children, the community, and the need to give back has secured Kaz Design. Brand. Web. a spot as a finalist in the Rocketspark Community Good Awards. Kaz also won the Fastest Growing Client award at Rocketspark's Launch Awards. Rocketspark Design Partner, Kaz, have done some incredible things for the community of Cambridge, especially for the younger members of the area. This comes as no surprise since founder, Karen May, was awarded a Queen’s Service Medal in 2017 in recognition...

Meet the team driven by customer success

When you need a helping hand with your website, who ya gonna call? The Rocketspark Customer Success team, of course! Our amazing Customer Success (CS) team is made up of Chantal Gellert, Stephanie Hay, Summer Gunn and Olivia Bennett. Our CS team have got our customers' back for any issues as the first port of call, they are constantly learning so they can share the best advice and they're our best teachers for customers learning new product features. Chantal is the team’s fearless leader, she�...