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Empower your success with Rocketspark’s latest ecommerce features

As ecommerce continues to boom throughout the world, feature requirements grow. At Rocketspark, our primary focus is to find ways to empower you to have a fresh and current looking website with all the bells and whistles that make operating an online store easier....

Ecommerce secret sauce—the 9 simple essentials of ecommerce success

Rocketspark co-founder and former ecommerce store owner Grant Johnson shares insights from clients and his own experience on the simple essentials required for ecommerce success....

Excite & delight your website visitors with autoplay video backgrounds

Being passionate about design, we’re excited to let you know that Rocketspark’s website builder now supports Video Stack Backgrounds. With this new design feature, along with the option to add colour and image backgrounds, you now have the option to display a video as a backdrop on your Rocketspark website....

Use Scheduled Ordering to offer set-time delivery & pick-up

Recently we launched a game-changing feature called Scheduled Ordering that enables you to take online orders for pick-up and/or delivery from your Rocketspark ecommerce website. Unlike other similar services, Rocketspark doesn't take a transaction or commission fee from you for orders placed through your website—offering a sense of relief for many businesses working hard to get through the recent effects of COVID-19....

Collaboration article: The Best Locally Made Tools for Kiwi Freelancers

This blog post content has been supplied by VXT. Vxt is a smart voicemail driven assistant that converts your voicemails to text and provides you with tools to save you time and money....

COVID-19 video interviews

Our customers share their stories on how they've adapted their businesses during COVID-19 and the steps they're taking now to ensure they can continue operating after the pandemic....

Single use per customer coupon: Boost sales and reward your loyal customers

Have you ever wanted to run a promotion for your online store on social media or with a mass email blast using the same discount coupon code, where recipients can only use it once? Now you can!Coupons are a great way to motivate or reward select customers by offering special discounts and we’re thrilled to be able to add another type of coupon to the mix. ...

Say goodbye to /page/—remove it from your page URLs

In the early days of Rocketspark, there were a range of decisions to make about the tech architecture of the platform. Over the last ten years, some of the technology behind Rocketspark has adapted to new opportunities and ways of doing things....

What size and type of pictures should I upload to websites?

Besides SEO, one of the most common topics designers ask the Rocketspark team about is picture files. Picture quality can really make or break a website, so I’ll explain how to avoid some of the most common mistakes when it comes to uploading picture files to display on websites. Before eventually moving into a design career following university, I spent 6 months in what felt like the wrong degree. The Bachelor of Computing and Mathematical Science is a 4-year computer science and maths degree...

The secrets of a successful shipping strategy—ecommerce shipping rates explained 🥴📦

Ecommerce shipping rates are one of the most confusing aspects of ecommerce for new merchants. Different courier providers structure their pricing in different ways. Bags, boxes, stickers, weight, size, free shipping, flat rate shipping, high dollar items, low-value items, extra-large or heavy items?  So how should I set up my shipping? This post showcases the most popular ecommerce shipping techniques used by some of the largest ecommerce retailers—and why they can still work for sma...

Why the best web designers take care of SEO as they design

As one of the co-founders of Rocketspark, I have seen many websites designed over the last 10 years. Some of those websites have been designed for a client where SEO (search engine optimisation) hasn’t been considered during the design phase of the project—the website might look stunning but when you search for a business like theirs in Google, their competitors show up and they don’t. SEO isn’t critical for every website but if potential customers are doing searches for services and...

Dropdown menus—help your website viewers find what they’re looking for

We are excited to announce the release of dropdown menus as a standard feature of Rocketspark on all plans. For over ten years we've been promoting the importance of clear, simple website visitor journeys—the kinds of experiences that don’t leave the visitor confused or overwhelmed. Used badly, dropdown menus can really go against the grain on that and lead to overwhelming rabbit warrens of a website structure and that’s why we’ve guided people towards alternatives. Over time, our vi...

A new look for a new decade

Designing the first Rocketspark logo from the bedroom of a Hamilton flat in 2008, I never could have imagined the adventure we would go on for the next decade.  What went from a bit of a DIY moonlighting project is now a business with thousands of clients in dozens of countries, employing nearly 20 staff. In December 2018, I sat down with our designer Natalie Trow and asked for her design vision for Rocketspark.  She listed a new website for Rocketspark, Full-width Stacks, Grid Gallery...

How to operate your business during Level 3 in New Zealand

Retail and hospitality businesses can now open for delivery and contactless pre-ordered pick up – customers cannot enter stores. If you’re a business owner, this is of course great news but understandably news that can be a little overwhelming to digest. With this in mind, we’ve put together a quick-start guide to help get you up and running online to meet the needs and wants of your customers during Level 3....

FiT Gym: Opening virtual doors to connect with our members in lockdown

There's no denying that gyms, fitness centres and dance studios have been amoungst the hardest hit in this pandemic.  Rather than give up, Kylie & Jamie, owners at FiT Gym continued to communicate and care for their members online with free classes on how to count calories and macros and even FiT Gym Pub Quiz nights! On March 23 2020 from their home garden, the owners made the announcement to their FiT family on their website, social media and with an email that they were closing their...

How to pivot your existing business during COVID-19—case study with Fiasco

As the effects COVID-19 started to be felt around the world, the event industry was hammered with blanket cancellations. The flow-on effect has and is being felt by 1000’s of contractors and companies New Zealand wide. Fiasco Cases needed to make a decision, either pivot and innovate or face closures....

How to build a subscription business—case study with Alexander Organics

As a so-called townie living in the quaint little Waikato town of Cambridge, I was really looking forward to going out into the countryside to meet with Ellen, owner/operator at Alexander Organics. From a marketing perspective raw milk is just so buzzy and Ellen and Jesiah’s story is an interesting one. At a more personal level though, it’s because for months I’ve been hearing whisperings around Cambridge of this family run business just out of town who’re selling raw milk on-tap an...

What to do with your website during the COVID-19 lockdown

In this blog we outline some simple actions you can take to ensure your website works hard for you to 1) update your clients and 2) lay a foundation for the future....

COVID-19: Hospitality and Food Service Playbook

Make the most of your online presence and plan for the future.Our thoughts are very much with our friends in hospitality and food service who have been so affected by the impact of COVID-19.  We want to help you where we can and we’ve created this playbook with some ideas to consider for your website....

What to do with your online store during the COVID-19 lockdown

We’ve prepared this guide to help you update your website to best manage the tricky scenarios that currently exist: not being able to ship ecommerce orders during the lockdown where you are able to ship online orders during the lockdown.  ...

COVID-19: Ecommerce playbook

This ecommerce express playbook aims to help get your business online, and fast.If you already have an ecommerce store, check out what to do with your online store during lockdown....

COVID-19: Retailers playbook

This playbook is for small owner-operator businesses who want to fight for survival in the face of adversity.  (Already have an online store, see What to do with your online store during the COVID-19 lockdown. Or, head to this blog post if you need to set up an online store in a hurry.)...

How to access government COVID-19 financial assistance

We are all starting to get our heads around how coronavirus will affect us personally, along with our businesses, our communities, country and world and I don’t think there will be very many people at all who will be unaffected.  It has been a relief then that a number of governments around the world have rapidly pulled together a range of support packages, and while these packages will cushion, rather than eliminate the financial impact of coronavirus, we have heard several stories of ho...

How to add a COVID-19 stack on your Rocketspark website

It’s a challenging time to be in business and the Rocketspark team wants to help you make the most of your website to serve your clients. A simple way you can help your customers is to provide them with information about any changes to your services due to COVID-19. You’ll be showing your customers that you are aware of any changes as they come into play, that you want to keep them informed, and you care about them. So, if you have a Rocketspark website, we're just going to show you how to a...

COVID-19: Pharmacy playbook

How to make your pharmacy website work hard for you during COVID-19With a global pandemic underway our pharmacies have a key role to play so we’ve prepared a playbook to help pharmacies make the most of their web presence to serve their customers and their community.  By talking to pharmacy owners over the last couple days we’ve gathered some practical tips which can help to keep your team and customers safe when they do come to your pharmacy....