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Launch inspires and builds up Rocketspark community

After two days of collaboration and learning at Launch 2021, Rocketspark's community of designers are more connected than ever. Launch: Design Conference and Awards Dinner is an annual event filled with inspirational topics, speakers, workshops and celebration with the Rocketspark partner network. Rocketspark’s epic network of design partners create websites for people all around the globe. Kicking off the pre-event, Designwell’s Alexander Wastney spoke about his journey with design, a great...

Business turns to colour

Jo Rankin’s passion for art goes back to childhood, she has vivid memories of constantly colouring and drawing. In her teenage years at high school she studied art, but, she said, in that time you had to find a job as soon as you’d left school. Jo landed a job in an office, leaving her with little time and inspiration to follow her passion for art. It wasn’t long after that, she was married to her husband, Rod. In Jo’s mid to late 30s she and her husband started an importing business. Sh...

Rocketspark win supreme

Every year the local Waipa Business Community in New Zealand comes together to celebrate with finalists in the Waipa Networks Business Awards. This year Rocketspark not only had many clients in the running for awards, but were also finalists in two categories; Contribution to Tourism and Excellence in Large Business. During the event we were crowned winners in the Excellence in Large Business category and we also took out the sort after Supreme Award....

Community, the pillar behind Quick Brown Fox

Amanda Livingston’s background is in professional services marketing, having started out working for global law and accounting firms and a major bank. She’s moved from Scotland, to the Caribbean, to New Zealand. She’s a mother to three boys and the winner of Rocketspark’s Community Good Award this year.  She’s done so much for her community that when our in-house storyteller, Kyra Piccione, caught up with her, she didn’t have enough time to talk about all of it. Amanda said she ...

Rocketspark’s Launch Awards draws crowd

Locally based website builder, Rocketspark, drew a crowd of over 100 people from all around New Zealand last night for its annual awards dinner. Rocketspark has an epic network of design partners who create websites for people all around the globe. To give back, Rocketspark’s CEO Grant Johnson, after speaking on the company's 2021 vision which aimed to make the world a better place, announced they would be giving each Design Partner a free not-for-profit website - for life - voucher. The partn...

Side hustle takes off during Covid

Australian based Rocketspark Design Partner, Jess Golding, started a side hustle business that took off thanks to Covid and a bubbly attitude. Jess started Bubble Marketing back in 2018, but really kicked it off in 2020, due to Covid. The bubbly entrepreneur designed her own website with Rocketspark using her Bitmoji because, she said, “I wanted bubble to be a fun brand and nothing too serious”. Back in 2019, Jess was working with a few clients that wanted new, or updated, websites. She said...

Inspired by adventure and design

We have a new adventurer here at Rocketspark. Tyron Noble has joined us, bringing with him his sharp eye for detail and passion for how brands can create inspiration. Tyron, 31, is taking on the role of Graphic Designer here at Rocketspark. “I have a varied role helping with what the marketing team requires and helping with product design as well.  “I’m pretty excited about my new role, I love working for one brand and seeing how much you can make it grow,” he said. Tyron is origina...

Flint makes SEO easy for designers

One of our Design Partners got a client’s website ranking on Google’s page two within two days of going live, something she said was only made possible with the help of Rocketspark feature, Flint. Flint, enables designers to create content for Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) while giving you feedback on your page score - helping you to know if you’ve nailed the core SEO requirements. At Rocketspark we've seen both clients and designers struggle with the basics of SEO and that’s why we b...

Meet the 16-year-old computer programmer

A local high school student has gone from unpaid intern to money making computer programming wiz at Rocketspark in just two months. Ryan Cherry, 16, started at Rocketspark to gain some work experience in computer programming and coding after showing exceptional promise at school. Cambridge High School, where Ryan is a year-12 student, was forming a relationship with Rocketspark and they saw that he was over achieving in his digital studies. Carol Webb, Deputy Principal, said the school initially...

Developers are people, too

When you’re sitting behind your computer screen looking at a beautiful website you might marvel at technology and how amazing it is.  Well, it may surprise you that behind that technology is a bunch of good humans who work hard to keep it looking dazzling. Here at Rocketspark, we have a team of web developers, aka devs, who keep our clients' websites functional and beautiful. They are a work hard/play hard team who love to code, as well as stop for a quick office Counter Strike break twic...

SEO made so easy, you can do it yourself

Jono Viviani, Estimator at Summit Windows and Doors, an Auckland based company that built its own website, said the new Rocketspark feature, Flint, had been great as they didn’t really have any experience in SEO.  Jono studied Marketing and Business Management at the University of Waikato before he started his job at Summit Windows and Doors. While he was at university, he came across Rocketspark in one of his digital marketing classes and loved how easy it was to use. “When I started w...

A new beginning, from a different ending

Some things start small, and before they become well known, it can take a community to spread the word.  This is what happened with Rocketspark customer and newly self-published author, Elaine Williams’ new enterprise, in fact it started with something as small as a mouse.  Elaine is originally from Scotland, a place that has inspired many works of literature and her own love for storytelling.  “I studied literature at university. I’ve always loved books and written stories,...

Elm Marketing claims Gold

Melanie Cant (Mel), founder of Elm Marketing Solutions, is one of our esteemed Design Partners based in the UK and has recently earned her new status as a Rocketspark Gold Partner. Mel designed her 50th Rocketspark website earlier this month, claiming Gold, something she is really proud of. “I keep pinching myself, it’s been four years since I started on the Rocketspark road, so it didn’t happen overnight, but reaching 50 is quite an achievement isn’t it?” she said. Mel used to work at...

A passion for code

Staff profile: Lara Villavicencio Lara Villavicencio loves dumplings, the TV sitcom Friends, and she has a passion for coding. The 25-year-old, has been a web developer at Rocketspark since June, 2018.  “I do both frontend and backend coding, but mostly I work on the frontend, which I enjoy the most because I like art.  “You are kind of designing while developing. I also help out with bugs, bugs are those annoying things that can go wrong in the system and I help fix them. It’s a...

Rocketspark’s wonder women

We are a tech company and half of our staff are women! That’s right, you read correctly.  So, for this year’s International Women’s Day we wanted to introduce you to all of the amazing women who work at Rocketspark.  Read on to check out a little bit about what our epic wahine do and learn something new about each of the hardworking boss ladies....

Covid helps new jewellery business shine

Anna Seelye, Hamilton-based creative designer and owner of Frances Adrian Jewellery Design, founded her business, thanks to Covid-19.  The jewellery expert realised, in the wake of the Covid-19, there was a need to offer a jewellery design experience beyond the traditional “bricks-and-mortar” store model.  “This business is something I’ve had in the back of my mind for a long time and my experience in the industry in both New Zealand and London has taught me a lot about wh...

Preset Stacks: Add beautifully designed layouts as quick as a click

What you can design with Rocketspark has exploded over the last couple of years to a whole new level of creative freedom. With the launch of Grid Gallery, column backgrounds, full-width stacks and a range of new mobile-website tools, do-it-yourselfers and leading web designers alike have been creating incredible looking websites on Rocketspark. But custom-designing a site takes time—font sizes and letter spacing, adding blocks and mobile spacing all need to be adjusted for every stack....

Staff profile: Inside Bill's Mind

From chess champion to pro online gamer, Rocketspark Web Developer, Bill Li, is a man of many hats, and pies. Bill works on Rocketspark’s full stack web development, and the team thought it was about time our customers got to know him better as a person.  “When it comes to programming and coding we divide it into two parts, the frontend and the backend. The frontend is all the code you can see, your website and its functionality. The backend code is all the data that holds it altogether...

Circular Eggs get around on subscription

When you think of a subscription, maybe you think Netflix, news websites, or magazines, but have you ever thought, “eggs”?  Well, Rocketspark customer, Circular Eggs, sure did and since creating a website and using our handy subscription feature, their eggs have been getting around. Hayden Power and Tina Armstrong were both born on conventional dairy farms. After a stint exploring overseas they returned to Hayden’s family farm in Whakatāne and were given the opportunity to start work...

Launch: Two days of inspiration for the Rocketspark design community

Rocketspark has an epic network of design partners who do an incredible job creating websites for people all around the globe every year. We believe their work shouldn’t go unnoticed, so we are holding our third partner conference and awards evening, Launch. The design conference spans over two days of inspiration. Those who are lucky enough to grab a limited ticket will gain a fresh understanding of website development, storytelling and design, as well as the chance to network up a storm; not...

Mahi a Atua: Inspiring success in achieving systemic change

In celebration of Waitangi Day, we wanted to showcase one of our epic Māori business clients: Mahi a Atua. Read their story below. In the mid-1990s Diana Kopua developed Mahi a Atua, an indigenous approach that responds to ongoing issues regarding institutional racism and inequity for Māori within New Zealand health and society.  Te Kurahuna Ltd is the facilitator of the kaupapa Mahi a Atua. Because they are so collaborative they answered our interview questions as a team. The t...

Customer Accounts helps florist bloom

One of Rocketspark’s many helpful features, Customer Accounts, has fertilised the growth of a thriving flower business. Flowers by Joanne opened in Orewa 45 years ago, Barbara Everiss bought the business back in 2000, and after 18 years, she sold it to its current owner Li Gong.  Li speaks highly of her predecessor, who even left her a personalised number plate saying “bouquet”....

Rocketspark launches towards change in 2021

This spin around the sun is set to bring about many new and exciting changes for Rocketspark’s customers, new and old. Rocketspark in-house storyteller, Kyra Piccione, took time to catch up with some of the founders and team to learn what customers can expect this year. It turns out automation, a new modular approach to design, multiple logins for one site, possible vector animation and a website import programme are all on the cards, along with lots of other improvements, read on for more det...

Introducing Kyra Piccione

We have a new creative cat here at Rocketspark. Kyra Piccione has joined us to kick off 2021, bringing with her the passion to tell our stories. Kyra has spent most of her young adult life telling stories, through journalism, PR and as a communications guru in her past roles. After being nominated as a finalist in the NZ Media Awards for Junior Journalist of the Year in 2017, she went on a backpacking adventure to over 20 different countries.  Since then, she has been honing her craft of wr...

Free Google Shopping listings now available in New Zealand, Australia, the UK and more

Google Shopping has previously only been available as a paid advertising service that promotes products from your online store in Google search results. The great news is that Google is now offering free Google Shopping listings—and with a Rocketspark ecommerce website, you can be up and running with your free listings in no time....