Success Stories
Real businesses, real results. Discover how Zesty has helped businesses like yours overcome challenges, streamline operations, and achieve their goals.
Vivant Equi
Website Design & Development
What we did
Vivant Equi is a New Zealand‑owned online equestrian store in Tauranga, offering quality gear for horses and riders across Aotearoa. As the range and customer base grew, owner Juliet needed an online store that could keep up with the business and be easy to manage, both for day‑to‑day updates and long‑term growth.
Over time, Juliet’s original ecommerce setup became harder to work with. As product numbers increased, it felt slower and less reliable, and the admin side made it difficult to quickly update products, images and content in the way she needed. On top of this, there was a lot of legacy complexity in product data and SEO, which made it challenging to keep everything consistent and visible without investing huge amounts of time into manual tidy‑ups. Juliet wanted a more modern, flexible solution that would feel better for customers and remove the friction she felt every time she needed to change something on the site.
We recommended a full ecommerce rebuild using WordPress, Kadence Pro and WooCommerce, chosen for their flexibility, performance and ability to integrate cleanly with tools like Google and Meta. The goal was to create an online store that was easier to navigate for riders, faster to browse, and much simpler for Juliet to maintain herself, so she could make changes without wrestling with the technology. The new website build included a product‑migration process to bring Vivant Equi’s large catalogue into the new store, keeping key product information intact and ensuring a smooth transition for Juliet and her customers.
The new website was set up on reliable NZ hosting with performance and security best practices in place behind the scenes, and the visual design was refreshed with a clean, mobile‑friendly layout and intuitive navigation so customers could quickly find what they needed. Ecommerce settings were tailored for New Zealand tax, shipping and payment options to ensure a smooth checkout experience with familiar providers, including Stripe, Paypal and Afterpay. Key analytics and marketing integrations were added, giving Juliet clear visibility over how the site was performing and supporting any campaigns she wanted to run. Training and handover were built in, with review calls and a tailored training video so Juliet could confidently manage products, content and SEO in the new setup without relying on developers.
We provided the following services:
- Website design and rebuild on WordPress using Kadence Pro
- Ecommerce setup on WooCommerce
- Configuration for GST and NZ shipping
- Stripe, Paypal and Afterpay integration, plus bank transfer payment options
- Product migration planning and execution for a large, complex catalogue
- Responsive design optimised for desktop, tablet, and mobile
- Google Analytics setup for performance tracking
- Facebook Pixel integration to support remarketing and social advertising
- Training, onboarding and handover resources for ongoing self‑management
Results
The new Vivant Equi website now delivers a noticeably smoother and more responsive shopping experience for customers, with faster browsing and a clearer path to the products they care about.
Behind the scenes, Juliet has far more control: product updates, content tweaks and SEO improvements are quicker and less stressful, and the store is easier to understand and maintain day‑to‑day. With reliable tracking and a more future‑ready platform based on WordPress, Kadence Pro and WooCommerce, Vivant Equi is well‑positioned to keep growing, run effective campaigns and later explore automations like accounting or inventory integrations to support the next stage of the business.
Working with us, in their own words…
I’d been considering changing my website platform for a while, as it was restrictive and didn’t allow me to do much myself, including adding plugins to expand functionality. The final straw came when the server was hacked and the hosting company’s response was less than satisfactory, leaving my site almost unusable overnight with ongoing performance issues.
Having worked with Jodie before, I reached out to explore my options. She arranged a call with Heidi to discuss how Zesty Digital Studio could help. They immediately understood my frustrations and the urgency of the situation. I was very happy with their proposal and signed up.
Given the urgency, the Zesty team went above and beyond to get my new site built and live. I worked alongside them, adding products as they built the site, and we had a brand new website up and running in just two weeks – absolutely incredible.
