Bundoran’s year has a shape that everyone in the town knows. The shutters go up around Easter, June brings the surf and music festival, July and August fill every bed, caravan and chipper from the West End to Tullan Strand, September belongs to the surfers chasing the autumn swell, and by January much of Main Street is closed and the Peak is breaking for a handful of locals in thick wetsuits. A business here earns most of its year in a few months, and website design in Bundoran has to be built around that calendar rather than pretend the town is the same in February as in August. We work from Dublin, which suits a town where the owner is behind the counter from ten in the morning until late: one phone or video call, photos and details by WhatsApp, and a site live within days.
Searching from Fermanagh, Tyrone and Dublin
Bundoran’s visitors are mostly Northern families who have come every summer for generations, surfers from Dublin, Galway and abroad, and day trippers from Sligo and Donegal. The Northern family books the caravan or the B&B from Enniskillen or Omagh, pays with a UK card and arrives on the N15 past the Leitrim border at Tullaghan. The surfer books a lesson or a board from a phone on the Friday. The day tripper searches “chipper Bundoran” from the seafront. All three use Google, and the Northern customer in particular needs the number in +353 form, which dials from Omagh as easily as from Sligo, prices stated in euro, and payment by card that settles in euro to your account while their bank handles the sum.
Hours that change, and a site you can change
The single most damaging thing a Bundoran business can have online is last summer’s hours in February. A family drives from Ballyshannon for the waterpark or the amusements, finds a locked door that Google said was open, and leaves a review. Every plan we offer includes a private self-edit page, opened from a link in your email with no password, where you change hours, prices and a notice about the season from your phone in a minute. With Complete we also keep your Google Business Profile updated month by month, including the winter hours, so the listing and the site agree. The guide on setting up a Google Business Profile in Ireland shows how the hours and special days work.
Surf schools, lodges and the deposit
The surf schools, the lodges and hostels, the B&Bs and the caravan parks live on bookings, and bookings taken by Instagram message or a phone call in the middle of a lesson are the ones that get lost. A booking page with a deposit, available at eleven at night from Omagh, is what fills the Tuesday morning lesson in a wet June. Complete includes bookings and deposits with the money going straight to your own account, and we have written about how to take deposits online in Ireland so that your cancellation terms are fair when the forecast turns.
The photographers who shoot the surf and the weddings at the hotels on the cliffs have the same problem in a different form: real work, no page Google can read.
Saying where you are
The site should say Bundoran, Co. Donegal, carry the F94 Eircode, name the seafront, Main Street or the West End, and tell a visitor where to park in August, which is not obvious. A business that also serves Ballyshannon, Kinlough, Tullaghan and Rossnowlagh should name them in words.
Plans
Essentials is €499 to set up and €50 a month. Complete is €1,499 and €100 a month and adds the bookings, deposits and monthly Google work that a seasonal town runs on. There is no contract, so a business that closes for the winter can stop and start as it likes with 30 days’ notice. Both plans are on the pricing page, and the chippers page shows what a seafront takeaway site includes.