Most people in Ashbourne arrived in living memory. It was a village on the Dublin road with a long main street until the 1970s; then the estates came, and kept coming, until it was one of the larger towns in Meath, full of young families who work in Dublin, at the airport a short drive down the N2, or in the business parks along the M50. The M2 took the through traffic off the main street, Ashbourne Town Centre added a second place to shop, and the town’s schools, pitches, gyms and creches have been catching up with the houses ever since. Emerald Park, which most people still call Tayto Park, is a few minutes out the road.
Website design in Ashbourne is about a town where nearly every customer is new to somewhere, and chooses on a phone. We are in Dublin, so the first conversation is by phone or video call, and the work after that runs the same as for the clients we meet across the county line.
A town that searches
Few households in Ashbourne have a plumber they inherited from their parents. The families in the estates found their creche, their dentist, their gym, their beautician and their electrician by searching for them, and they will do it again when they need the next one. The searches run in the evening and at the weekend, “creche Ashbourne”, “personal trainer Ashbourne”, “nails Ashbourne”, “alarm installer Meath”, “bouncy castle hire Ashbourne”, and they are decided on three things: who appears, who has reviews, and who can be booked without a phone call. The parents’ WhatsApp groups and the town’s Facebook groups still pass names around, but a name gets checked on Google before it gets a call.
The main street, the N2 and the edges
Ashbourne’s trade is strung along the main street and gathered in the Town Centre, with the gyms, trade counters, car businesses and units on the roads out towards the M2. For a shop or a salon, the site needs correct hours, the A84 Eircode, the street address and parking directions, because the main street is long enough that “Ashbourne” alone does not tell a customer where to pull in. For a trade or a mobile business, the service area is the thing: Ratoath, Dunshaughlin, Kilmoon, Garristown, Ballyboughal, the Ward, and across the county line to Swords, Finglas and Blanchardstown, which is where a lot of Ashbourne’s work is. Those names belong on the page in sentences, and on the Google Business Profile as the service area.
Gyms, classes and bookings that take themselves
Ashbourne has a lot of gyms, studios, personal trainers, dance and martial arts classes for children and after-school clubs, and most of them run on Instagram and a booking app or a spreadsheet. The members are fine with it. The new family who moved in last month cannot find the timetable, cannot see the price and cannot book a trial without a phone call during working hours. A site that shows the classes, takes the booking and the payment, sends the reminder and lets a member change a session from the phone is what turns a search into a member. The guide on how to take online bookings runs through the options; taking deposits online covers the party entertainers, bouncy castle hire and caterers who lose Saturdays to no-shows.
Price
Essentials is €499 to set up and €50 a month. Complete is €1,499 and €100 a month and includes bookings with deposits, payments, review requests, chat and the monthly Google work. Both are set out on the pricing page, and the gyms page shows what a gym’s site includes.