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Social media for ecommerce – how to build a following

This post is a chapter from our e-book Getting Started With E-Commerce – The Beginner's Guide to Starting an Online Shop.Download your own free copy to learn how to start an online shop ...

4 things to think about before you start an online shop

This post is a chapter from our e-book Getting Started With E-Commerce – The Beginner's Guide to Starting an Online Shop.Download your own free copy to learn how to start an online shop ...

New Staff Profile: Sam Trimmer - UK Account Manager

We love our new account manager (for the UK), Sam Trimmer. It’s a steep learning curve joining an upstart startup where things develop at breakneck speed. But Sam, well, he just keeps calm and carries on. ...

Long-tail SEO - Part 2: How to find and write to your keywords

Jeff Bezos built Amazon into a retail behemoth on the power of the long tail. And by applying long-tail principles to your SEO, you too could turn your own little website into something big; maybe not Amazon-big—but still big! (What is long-tail SEO? Check out Part 1 of this blog series to find out.) So, how do you actually do long-tail SEO? Think of it in two steps: ...

Long-tail SEO - Part 1: What Amazon can teach you about search rankings

Amazon.com just turned 20 years old. That’s right—the Little E-tailer That Could is now officially an adult. After going live on July 16, 1995, Amazon rapidly grew into the king colossus of online retail, and the secret fuelling its two-decade reign could boost your website’s search rankings. The genius of Amazon, or at least part of it, is that it turns conventional business wisdom on its head. Instead of trying to sell massive amounts of a small number of products, it relies largely on ...

Rocketspark at Xero Summer Camp Webinar

Xero have invited us to present at their Xero Summer Camp.  I’ll be demonstrating how easy it is for small business owners to make their own website and harness the benefits of Xero and other Xero add ons on a Rocketspark website. We’ll build a website during the webinar and while building the website I’ll explain 5 essentials of an effective website home page. To bring the webinar to life we'll do this webinar with a real life business example. Enter your details to appl...

The little town that could...

Most of us would have read "The Little Engine That Could" as children.  The small locomotive saying “I think I can, I think I can…” and eventually making it over the mountain. Even at a young age, the idea of the underdog succeeding resonates with us. With five of the Rocketspark team living in the small New Zealand town of Cambridge (population 18,750), we have a strong bond with this little town that could. Cambridge has a track record of punching above its weight. New Zealand’...

Staff Profile: Harvey Kane

Every team needs a veteran. That’s why developer extraordinaire Harvey Kane is a major asset to the Rocketspark crew. His vast experience and serious skill mean that, when looking at a big job, Harvey knows how to get ‘er done.Harvey’s first contact with Rocketspark came when he answered a message we posted on a developers’ forum. It was an SOS call for help with a project using Concrete5—a content management system that he happens to be pretty handy at. We outsourced the job to the Wa...

5 Point Website Health Check

Put colours, fonts and design aesthetic to the side initially. Website first impressions are important but start by focussing on things that can be easily measured and aren’t subjective. That’s the fastest way to check if something’s not right with your website. Here’s our 5 point website health check as a starting point. ...

Staff Profile Greg Wallace

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Rocketspark Integrates with eWay and Stripe payment gateways

At Rocketspark we have been hard at work putting together our latest feature set. This time it's more payment gateway options for our online shops. Our latest additions includes eWay and Stripe. It's also possible now to have more than one payment gateway connected to your online shop. So you can have Payment Express and Paypal enabled as well and let your customers decide which payment gateway they would like to use. We show these options in a tidy popup at the final step of the checkout proce...

Introducing the all new Rocketspark picture editor

The new picture editor is now live for all Rocketspark customers and trial users.  Now you can edit all of your pictures directly on your website, without the need for graphic design software – then see how it looks in real-time on your page.  The video above gives a 2 minute overview of the new picture editor but for a full list of what's included, keep reading. ...

Accountants: Should you talk to clients about their website?

Should accountants talk to their clients about their website? We get it, you’re not marketers, you’re not designers, you’re not web experts – so why should you talk to clients about their website? Poorly performing websites can be like a handbrake for the financial performance of a business and if you really want your client to succeed financially, an effective website is an important piece of the puzzle. ...

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...

Want to relive Xerocon Auckland or wish you were there?

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Rocketspark @ Xerocon 2015: What’s a website builder doing at an accounting conference?

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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... ...

Bringing a little Rocketspark to Xerocon London

We’re really looking forward to joining Xero again at their flagship event, Xerocon. I bet if you told too many people you were looking forward to a conference about accounting software you may get a few strange looks but Xerocon is a genuinely fun, interesting and worthwhile event. ...

Which design package is best for me? Startup or Professional?

At Rocketspark, we love it when people design and build their own websites using our super easy website builder but we do get people who want us to design and build them something a little more custom or who are too busy to do it themselves. In these cases, we have design packages that will cater to most businesses in need of a new website. The question is, “which is the right package for my business”? In a nutshell, the main difference between the packages is the level of design. Both deli...

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 ...

Website builder update: 5 big ways we’ve improved it (in-depth)

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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. ...