Bettystown and Laytown have two kinds of trade and they barely overlap. From June to September the strand fills with day trippers from Drogheda and Dublin, the ice cream and chipper queues reach the road, and the one day in September when the races are run on the beach brings a crowd the villages hold until dark and lose by morning. The rest of the year this is a commuter coast: people who bought in the estates between the two villages, take the train from Laytown to Dublin, and come home in the dark to search for the things any growing place needs. Website design in Bettystown and Laytown has to serve both. We do it from Dublin: a video call to begin, WhatsApp afterwards, and the site built from the photos and details you send. We have no premises on the coast, and the work does not require one.
The visitor searches from the sand
A family on the beach at three o’clock wants chips, coffee, a toilet and somewhere for dinner that will take children. They search from the phone in their hand, in Google Maps, and they go to whichever place shows up with photos, open hours and a short walk. A cafe or chipper whose only presence is a Facebook page with a photo from two summers ago loses that search to the one with a proper listing and a page that says “two minutes from the beach, parking at the back”.
For B&Bs and holiday lets in Bettystown, Laytown and Mornington, the race meeting and the summer weekends are booked by people who have never been here, from a laptop, weeks ahead. A page with real photos of the rooms and the walk to the strand, and a way to book or enquire on the spot, is what does that work.
The commuter searches from the train
The other customer is on the morning train out of Laytown with a problem at home. A boiler, a leaking flat roof, a dog that needs grooming before the weekend, a child who needs a haircut before the school photograph. They type “plumber Bettystown”, “dog groomer Laytown”, “hairdresser near me”, and they are weighing you against Drogheda businesses, because Drogheda is ten minutes up the road and its trades all cover the coast. Your advantage is that you are here. The page has to say so: based in Laytown, covering Bettystown, Mornington, Donacarney, Julianstown and east Meath, and Drogheda if that is true.
A92, and saying which village you mean
The coast shares the A92 routing key with Drogheda, and Google is not always sure where Bettystown ends and Laytown begins. The site and the Google Business Profile should carry the same name, address and phone number, written the same way, and a line naming both villages and the ones around them. A trade working from home should set the profile up as a service area business rather than pinning a house in an estate. A shop at Bettystown Town Centre or by the Laytown strand should say where to park and how far it is from the station.
Cafes, groomers and holiday lets that live on Instagram
The coast is full of small businesses that run entirely on Instagram or Facebook: cafes, cake makers, dog groomers, a mobile hairdresser, a cottage let by the week. It works for the regulars and fails for the person who has just arrived, which here is half the trade in July. A page of your own with hours, prices and a map, and a Google listing to match, catches them. We have written about whether Instagram is enough on its own, and about getting more Google reviews, which matter more where every visitor reads them before choosing.
Price
Essentials is €499 to set up and €50 a month. Complete is €1,499 and €100 a month and adds bookings and deposits, which a B&B or a groomer booked weeks ahead actually needs. The detail is on the pricing page, and the B&Bs and guesthouses page shows what we build for a seaside stay.