Waiheke Local is an initiative that has been developing over the past 4 years. The idea was born from our experience of moving to Waiheke Island and not easily being able to locate essential services. We found most of the Waiheke information-based websites were aimed solely at tourist services, which is great for tourists – but what about the locals who need to find a plumber, a landscape architect, a dentist, or just want to find out what events are coming up at Artworks. As a solution we created Waiheke Local – the ‘go-to’ website, a one-stop-shop for all local information.
Our website provides a directory for island-based businesses, with each listing displaying contact details and link through to their own website. We monitor the traffic to our site and can give the businesses listed with us the statistics of how many visitors are being referred on to their own site.
Not being content with purely being a directory site, we’ve developed Waiheke Local into a site that includes community events, social and sports groups, a local blog, and information on island activities. The clean, magazine-styled design of our site reflects our core values; that a website should look good, work well, be easy for the audience to navigate and be found within search engines. We’ve also designed our site to be responsive to the users device, meaning that it is easily viewed on smart phone and tablets as well as a computer.
The team behind Waiheke Local is a creative one, with experience in web design and development. The site has been developed by Paul Ashworth, a web developer on Waiheke Island. Paul’s experience includes SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) and web marketing, he is also able to assist with Google Analytics and provide web-hosting services.
We have recently launched a new version of our site. We are very excited about the improvements we’ve made to the site which include the ability to book accommodation, an increased number of feature posts within each category, and SEO performance improvements.
We’d love to hear from you and any feedback you may have.
