The 2014 NetGuide Web Awards were held at the Hilton in Auckland last night. MC, Urzila Carlson from 7 Days entertained the crowd, showcasing how much web related humour she had learnt since MC'ing last year. 

Zeald won Best Web Developer, sponsored by Microsoft Azure, for the fourth year in a row.

"We would like to thank all our clients, supporters, and the wider Zeald team, who voted for us. Four years in a row, is not an easy feat, and we are stoked!"

- Evan Cooper, Zeald Marketing Manager.

A full list of winners are as follows:

Best Real Estate Site: realestate.co.nz
Best Employment Site: Seek.co.nz
Best Blog: WhaleOil.co.nz
Best News Site: NZHerald.co.nz
Best Lifestyle & Recreation Site: NZDating.com
Best Entertainment Site: TVNZ On Demand
Best Shopping Site: Grabone.co.nz
Best site for Gamers: MightyApe.co.nz
Best Online Forum: GeekZone.co.nz
Best Web Developer: Zeald
Best Online Fundraising Initiative: givealittle.co.nz
Best Travel Site: Airnewzealand.co.nz
Best Government Site: ird.govt.nz
Best Financial Site: asb.co.nz
Best Site for Small Business: Xero.com
Best Site for Students: Kidspot.co.nz
Best Site for Families: TVNZ On Demand
Best PC Manufacturer: Lenovo
Best ISP: Spark
Best Mobile Network: Spark
Best Mobile App: GrabOne
Best Homepage: facebook.co.nz
Overall Winner: GrabOne.co.nz

New Zealand website company, Zeald, received the Best Web Developer award for the third year in a row at the ESET NetGuide Web Awards 2013.

The awards were held last evening at the Hilton Hotel in Auckland, and were presented by popular comedian Urzila Carlson (7 Days), who kept the crowd entertained with her laugh-out-loud humour and quick wit.

Following on from their win in 2011 and 2012, the team at Zeald couldn’t be happier to be publicly voted the best web developer again for 2013.

“A HUGE thank you to everyone who got behind Zeald in the NetGuide awards! Last night we won the NetGuide Best Web Developer and we couldn't be happier. Thanks again!”

Now in its 15th ceremony, the NetGuide Web Awards involves 27 categories in which you can vote for New Zealand’s best website. This year NetGuide received over 290,000 public votes.

The 27 categories range from Best Social Networking Page to Best PC Manufacturer, catering for all and covering a wide spectrum of Kiwi talent online.

The winners in all categories were:

Overall: Grabone.co.nz
Best Real Estate Site: Trademe.co.nz
Best Financial Site: kiwibank.co.nz
Best Entertainment Site: tvnz.co.nz/video
Best Employment Site:Seek.co.nz
Best Blog: Whaleoil.co.nz
Best Mobile App: BNZ Mobile App
Best News Site: Stuff.co.nz
Best Site for Gamers: Mightyape.co.nz
Best Web Developers: Zeald
NZ's Favourite Social Networking Page: GayNZ
Best Online Forum: Geekzone.co.nz
Best Site for Small Business: Xero.com
Best Trading Site: Trademe.co.nz
Best Sports & Recreation Site: AllBlacks.com
Best ISP: Vodafone
Best Lifestyle site: NZDating.com
Best Shopping Site: Grabone.co.nz
Best Online Fundraising Initiative: givealittle.co.nz
Best Mobile Network: 2Degrees
Best PC Manufacturer: HP
Best Site for Students: studyit.org.nz
Best New Launch, Relaunch or Innovation: GoBook.co.nz
Best Site for Families: WhatNow.tv
Best Government Site: ird.govt.nz
Best Site for Travellers: Grabone.co.nz
Best Homepage: google.co.nz

Website heavyweight Zeald gets behind a weighty cause.

Being overweight often has a big impact on your general well-being and heart health. With one New Zealander dying from coronary heart disease every 90 minutes, and with the obesity epidemic hitting all ages of society, it is important to create awareness around the need to take a positive step in the right direction and encourage people to lose a kilo.

The "Million for a Million" campaign aims to shed one million kilograms off the total weight of our nation. Zeald was approached by fashion designer and entrepreneur Annah Stretton, who is heading the campaign, to lend a hand to lighten the nation and promote a healthy lifestyle. The inspiration for the charitable project surfaced after Annah's recent Dry July 30-day hiatus from alcohol - a stellar effort that saw her contribute to the $500,000 raised for Northern Regional Cancer and Blood Service at Auckland City Hospital.

Heart Foundation Medical Director, Norman Sharpe commends Annah on her enthusiasm to get right to the heart of the nation’s increasing ill-health and galvanise New Zealanders into action.

“Despite medical advances, heart disease continues to be the single biggest killer of our men and women because of complex changes in the way New Zealanders live, work, eat and exercise,” says Professor Sharpe. “The journey towards heart health is about making small but achievable lifestyle changes – something that I’m certain this campaign can help inspire. We’re a charity and need public support more than ever. We’re very grateful for Annah for leading this initiative and being such a positive champion for change.”

Zeald designed and developed the Million for a Million website to include social media integration where participants share their stories of their health journey. These stories appear in the ‘Winners Gallery’ to encourage others to make a difference to their own health and the health of the nation.

Million for a Million is supported by Zeald, Annah Stretton, Westpac, Mediaworks, Pak N’ Save, New World, The Warehouse and the Heart Foundation who are excited to be encouraging New Zealanders and their own staff to think about their health and lose a kilo for the cause.

If you would like to join in the fight against fat, simply register and donate a dollar here. All proceeds will go towards the New Zealand Heart Foundation.

Zeald were awarded first place in the 2012 ESET NetGuide Web Awards for the Best Web Developer category sponsored by openhost.

The awards were presented last night in good spirit, courtesy of MC comedian Steve Wrigley, at the Hilton Hotel in Auckland.

Zeald’s Marketing Manager, Evan Cooper, accepted the award on behalf of the Zeald team. “We are really happy and grateful to win the Best Web Developer award for two years in a row. We strive to help small and medium sized businesses realise their online potential so receiving this kind of public accolade is the best kind of feedback.”

Winners from other categories included: google.co.nz, 2degrees, kiwibank.co.nz, mightyape.co.nz, allblacks.com, youtube.co.nz, stuff.co.nz, seek.co.nz and trademe.co.nz.

After weeks of public voting, Netguide presented 27 of their infamous yellow cube trophies to the lucky recipients at last night's ceremony. “With over 225,000 votes cast this year, the awards have been a huge success again” said NetGuide publisher Sean Mitchell.

Zeald wish to thank all their supporters and those who voted for them in the 2012 ESET NetGuide Web Awards.

Get your website talking to your software.

Is your website having problems integrating with your accounting software? Are you always manually keeping track of sales from auction websites? There is a better way.

Here at Zeald we think that doing business online should make things easier, but if your website isn't communicating with your sales, marketing and accounting software then things may seem a lot harder than they should be.

Zeald websites have always been able to connect to most third-party business applications, but it was a time consuming process that was a little complicated and a therefore a little on the expensive side. But now integration is much simpler through your Zeald website, making it easier for you to manage your business.

How do we do it? Through our integration partners Zeald websites can seamlessly integrate with the most popular platforms from CRM, eCommerce, Invoicing, Email Marketing, Event Management, Project and Team Management and Accounting simplifying and optimising business processes.

This means that all your integrations, data migrations, synchronisations and data de-duplication between different software platforms are taken care of by one of our integration partners through your Zeald website.

For example, if you use accounting software, such as Xero or MYOB, a Zeald website can integrate seamlessly with the software to manage all aspects of your business from your Zeald eCommerce website transactions to auction websites like eBay and TradeMe to CRM systems like HighRise or BatchBook and many more.

Some of the information that will integrate with your accounting software:

• Contacts - Full contact management including merging and synchronisation is supported.
• Invoices (Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payables) - Can be created automatically from eCommerce orders, CRM deals or invoicing systems.
• Invoice Payments - Can be automatically mapped to different bank/clearing accounts.
• Tax Rates - All the tax rates are imported from your accounting software to allow easy application of taxes on incoming invoices.
• Chart of Accounts - Are retrieved and can be used for generating invoices and map line items to the correct accounts.
• Bank Accounts - Are used to match cleared payments for simplified bank reconciliation.
• Inventory Items - Are retrieved and can be used to map and generate sales by matching them to your sold products on eCommerce platforms. New inventory items can also be created on the fly if new products are detected in other systems.

Save yourself time and money by integrating your Zeald website with your software. The applications we can connect to are updated all the time. Give Zeald a call on 0508 932 530 to see how we can help you integrate with your third-party software.

Zeald has been voted Best Web Developer in the 2011 NetGuide Web Awards.

The awards were presented last night at the Hilton Hotel in Auckland.

Zeald Sales and Marketing Director Brent Kelly received the award on behalf of the team at Zeald and said that he was “stoked to win the award, especially when it's the first year Zeald has been in the awards”.

Other winners on the night included the likes of Google, TradeMe, The All Blacks, BNZ, Stuff.co.nz and Facebook, "so it's encouraging to know that Zeald is seen in such high regard and as the best choice for website development in New Zealand" Brent said.

"Zeald wants to help New Zealand businesses to not only get a website, but to succeed in the online space, so it's nice to know that it's the voting public of New Zealand that picked us as the best".

Techday publisher Sean Mitchell said there was more than 270,000 votes cast in this year's awards.

That's right, we're packing up our belongings and moving to new premises in Albany this weekend [18 – 19 December]. It’s yet another move for the Zeald team but with change comes opportunity and this is something we are pretty excited about.

Our new home

As with most fast-growing companies, a lot of things have changed as Zeald has grown over the last couple of years. To give us room to grow now and in the future, we have decided to split our head office team into two separate offices.

To begin with the whole team will be moving into our new ‘operations centre’ at 28 Constellation Drive , Albany. Click on the map to view here.

Meanwhile we are working to prepare our new office for the sales team to move into in April. Look out for the new building in bright blue Zeald livery right next to the Greville Road off-ramp in the Tawa Drive Office Park. This is a fantastic location - extremely accessible right next to the motorway and with lots of onsite car parking.

No change to our service

The Zeald website hosting servers are located off-site so there will be absolutely no interruption to our services. As much as possible, all the moving will take place over the weekend and after hours so whether its support, design, development or a consultant you are after, they should be available as always!

Looking forwards

Even though our move was unexpected, it has opened us up to more opportunities to grow in the future. While it is disappointing to walk away from a place you have made your own, we believe strongly in keeping our focus facing forward - on the opportunities of the future.

Zeald is moving into 2011 well underway with plans to expand significantly throughout New Zealand, and even into Australia. We are looking for people to add to our e-business consulting team to assist with this, so give us a holler if you know of anyone suitable! :)

Why are we moving?

A lot of people have been asking us what brought about this move. To cut a (very) long story short, our landlord (who owns our current building but leases the land) appears to have some financial trouble which has resulted in them not being able to pay the ground rent on the land to the land owner.

As one can imagine, this was not an entirely satisfactory situation for the land owner, therefore the time came earlier this year when they took our landlord to court and had the ground lease canceled. This left Zeald with a lease from a landlord who had …. no building – not an entirely satisfactory situation for us! :)

Zeald tried to negotiate a new lease agreement with the new owner of the building. These negotiations however, ultimately proved unsuccessful when it became apparent the new owners were not prepared to offer us a new lease under the same conditions as our last one.

Training is where you learn the skills you need to load and manage your new website.

Your session begins with a review of what we call the ‘front-end’ of your website. This is the actual website that your customers see and use. Your trainer will ‘walk’ you through the site, explaining its structure, design, features and functionality, and ensure that you are familiar with technical terminology and vocabulary.

This gives you the opportunity to experience and understand how your site will function from your customers’ perspective. It will also give our trainer an opportunity to assess your level of understanding and learning style, which will enable them to ‘adjust’ their training strategy and methods according to your needs.

Once you understand how the front-end works it is time to move on to the website administration system- the ‘back-end’. You will be taught how the administration of your website works and how the two halves (front-end and back-end) relate to each other. The second part of the session, and the actual training, comprises a demonstration of the site administration functions.

You will be taught how to log into your website administration system and will be taken through the Zeald E-business Suite (ZES). Your trainer will cover the following modules in detail:

• Content Management

• Customer Management

• Orders Processing & Tracking

• Merchandising

• Reports

Your trainer will explain one module at a time and demonstrate each task within the module. If you do not understand a certain component, your trainer will review the task until you are confident you understand the process.

It is important to note that while training does follow a logical structure, to ensure you acquire the skills you need, it is still conducted in a very ‘flexible’ manner. As such, you are encouraged to ask questions, request clarification, view additional demonstrations and offer input and feedback… or if you want, have a go yourself at any stage, until you are confident that you have gained the understanding you need.

Your training will be conducted with an appreciation of your individual needs, your level of knowledge and your particular learning style. And remember, with Zeald, further support is only a phone call or email away!