The Meta Blog

Lodges of New Zealand offer far more than luxury accommodation and fine cuisine, they offer a total Lodge experience. Tailor made unique experiences, sometimes only available to lodge guests, characterise the exceptional hospitality offered by the Lodges of New Zealand.

The New Zealand Lodge Association has been a longtime client of ours. The Association members decided it was time for a complete rebrand with a focus on web marketing to increase the visibility of the NZLA website, directed towards Google searches.

The website had not been changed for several years, hence needed revising to reflect Google’s current relevance criteria. Also the overall branded seem to lack a uniqueness and didn’t reflect of goals and values of the Lodge Association.

We were stoked to be awarded this project as we felt we understood the goals of the association and could also offer some real innovation using the vast potential of Drupal to bring together a stunning website solution.

The key issues for the project were neatly divided into smaller project which included;

Rebranding – to create a new logo – but also identify the over broad vision for the Lodge Association.

Web marketing and relevance to current Google searches. What were the high value searches the association were missing in the current website – and what can be done to present a website which is relevant, and targeted to the ideals of their audiences.

The plan was to build the majority of the website content from information built around each Lodge. Where was it located? What activities and experiences are offered? What were the many ways a visitor would choose to select a Lodge?

Finally, what technologies needed to be in place to execute a website solution to bring it all together? This involved planning not only a site structure, but also the actual layouts for the many different page types and clarifying how we would layout the custom admin pages to push all of this information to the various parts of the website with one click.

This was to huge project which challenged our abilities and I think took us to a whole new level. The finished website is a masterpiece. It brings together a number of highly custom page views with multiple sorting orders, dynamic content is displayed in a number of various places.

The Lodges of New Zealand project brought together;

• Logo design
• Website marketing & strategy
• Custom Drupal development
• Custom page types
• Dynamic content views
• Random lodges featured on the homepage
• Interactive maps

A custom website development masterpiece powered by Drupal – Richard’s Pièce de Résistance!

Client: Lodges of New Zealand
Website: www.lodgesofnz.co.nz

Priority Property is a boutique Property Management company based in Christchurch and offer a premier service to landlords and tenants.

Meta Solutions worked alongside Priority Property Management to develop a new website to sync with their in-house property listings database, and establish an online web marketing strategy to build their brand visibility online so they would stand out for ‘Christchurch rental property’ related searches.

Database Integration

Priority Property Management use a desktop application called REST provided by Rockend to manage their rental properties. REST has an in-built web marketing module that allows them to upload their properties to various web channels including TradeMe – and their own website.
Working with Gold from Evolved Development we were able to integrate the REST data to be imported into the website so the client now manages the site content from their desktop application instead of a web browser.

As a result, Priority Property Management have produced a highly effective web marketing tool to promote their property listings directly from their REST database. They get a significant percentage of their rental applications via the website and currently achieve over 1,500 visits per month seeking Christchurch rental properties and can be found on page 1 of Google search results for ‘Christchurch rental properties’ (as well as a range of other related search phrases).

Client: Priority Property Management
Website: www.priorityproperty.co.nz

Mocka Designer Childrens Furniture is one of New Zealand’s leading niche online retailers in childrens furniture.

Mocka had outgrown their previous OS Commerce website. As their business continued to grow and more online orders were being made daily, administration was becoming a real problem for them. The goal with the website redesign was to build a brand new ecommerce website built on the Magento framework that would provide a solid platform for growth in future years.

An important aspect of any website redesign is that the current customers still feel acquainted with the new site. Mocka had an existing logo and brand identity which their customers love.

We were very keen to maintain the general look and feel of the existing website, whilst introducing some great new features provided in the Magento framework – such as the ability to link related products and upselling at the checkout.

As mocka.co.nz is a 100% online shop, we didn’t want to leave any aspect of their website marketing and search engine visibility to chance.

As part of our web marketing strategy we first researched the most requested search terms and related search phrases for children’s furniture to discover targeted keyword to ensure the website was highly visible to search engines.

Next we implemented a number of product targeted Google AdWords campaigns to fill in any gaps in their ‘on-page’ SEO.

The new and improved Mocka site is leaps and bounds beyond what was previously in place. The resulting mocka.co.nz website is a great example of what can be achieved using Magento eCommerce and already the website is paying for itself with it’s early success!

Client: Mocka
Website: www.mocka.co.nz