Buncrana lives half its life in Derry. People from the town drive to work in the city every morning, Derry families drive out to the shore front and Swan Park every fine Sunday, and the shops along Main Street take sterling as a matter of habit. The border at Bridgend is a short drive away and nobody thinks about it until the exchange rate moves. Buncrana is also the main town of Inishowen, which means that a plumber, a builder or a hairdresser here serves a whole peninsula, from Fahan and Burnfoot up to Clonmany, Carndonagh and Malin and across to Moville on Lough Foyle. Website design in Buncrana has to work for the Derry customer and the Carndonagh customer at once. We are based in Dublin and have no office in Donegal, so we start with a phone or video call, you send photos and details, and we build from those.
Two currencies, one Google
A Derry woman searching “hairdresser Buncrana” or “electrician Inishowen” is using a UK phone on a UK network and Google shows her the same results it shows a Buncrana local. What differs is what happens when she taps. A number written as 074 does nothing on her phone; a number written as +353 74 dials. A price with no currency symbol makes her guess; a price marked in euro does not. WhatsApp works identically on both sides. Card payments taken online settle in euro to your own account and her bank does the conversion, which is easier than a sterling float in the till. These are small things that decide whether the cross-border customer, who is a large part of the town’s trade, actually gets through to you.
Inishowen’s service town
For a trade the service area is the peninsula, and the site should say so village by village. Google matches “plumber Clonmany” to a page that mentions Clonmany, not to one that says “all of Donegal”. Buncrana, Fahan and most of Inishowen share the F93 routing key, and the Eircode on your contact page, matched exactly on your Google Business Profile, helps Google place you on the right side of the lough. The guide on getting your business on Google Maps explains the pin, the service area and the duplicate listings that trip up a lot of trades.
The town’s own layout matters for shops and salons: Main Street runs down the hill towards the shore, and a visitor needs to know which end you are at and where to park.
July, the shore and the caravans
Buncrana has been Derry’s seaside for generations, and the Twelfth fortnight still sends Derry families out to the shore front, Lisfannon beach and the caravan parks around the town. The pubs, chippers, cafes and B&Bs do a summer that is short and intense, and the people in it search for everything from the beach: “chipper Buncrana open now”, “B&B Buncrana tonight”, “bike hire Inishowen”. Hours that are correct on a July Sunday and a page that loads on a weak signal are worth more that fortnight than at any other time of year.
Trades on Facebook alone
The builders, electricians, plumbers, mechanics, valeters and oil suppliers of Inishowen mostly run on a Facebook page and a mobile, and for the neighbours that is plenty. The Derry couple who bought a house in Fahan, the nurse who works in Letterkenny and lives in Buncrana, the returning emigrant renovating the home place: they search Google, and Google cannot read a Facebook page the way it reads a site. A short page with your service area and photos of real jobs is what reaches them. Our guide on what local SEO is explains the mechanics.
Plans
Essentials is €499 to set up and €50 a month and suits a trade or a shop here. Complete is €1,499 and €100 a month with bookings, deposits, payments and chat for a salon or a B&B. Both are on the pricing page, and the plumbers page shows what a trade site includes.