Cabra is a suburb built for buses that ended up with a tram. The green line now stops at Cabra and at Broombridge, where it meets the Maynooth train line beside the Royal Canal, and that has changed who lives here: the houses the Corporation built in the 1930s and 1940s are being bought by couples who commute into the city on the tram, next door to families who have been on the same road for three generations. The shops are on Fassaugh Avenue and along the Cabra Road, and the trades are everywhere, with a van outside a good many of the houses. Website design in Cabra, in our experience, is mostly for those trades and for the hairdressers, nail bars, chippers and takeaways that serve the estates. We are Dublin based and we come out to Cabra to meet you.
How Cabra finds a plumber now
The old way still works: you ask the neighbour, and the neighbour has a number. But the new arrivals do not have the neighbour yet. They search “plumber Cabra” when the shower stops, “electrician Dublin 7” when the fuse board trips, and “painter near me” from the Luas on the way home. The local Facebook groups carry the recommendations, and then the recommended name gets searched before anyone rings it.
For the salons and the takeaways on Fassaugh Avenue the pattern is different. Customers know where the shop is. What they search for is the hours, the price of a blow dry, whether you deliver, and whether you are open on the bank holiday. Getting that wrong on Google is the same as a sign on the door saying closed.
Being correct for Dublin 7 and the roads around it
Cabra is Dublin 7, routing key D07, and shares the code with Phibsborough, Stoneybatter and Smithfield, so your page has to say Cabra in words and not just in the Eircode. Name the roads your customers name: Cabra Road, Fassaugh Avenue, the Navan Road, Old Cabra Road, Ratoath Road. For a trade, list the places you actually drive to, which for most Cabra tradespeople means Phibsborough, Glasnevin, Finglas and the Navan Road, and leave out the ones you do not.
The Google Business Profile is where most of the phone calls start. We set it up and verify it, and we make sure the pin, the category, the hours and the phone number match the site exactly. There is a guide on getting your business onto Google Maps if you want to see what is involved, and a plainer one on what local SEO is.
Transport notes help too. Say you are two minutes from the Cabra stop, or at the Broombridge end near the station, and people arriving for an appointment arrive calm.
Nail bars and takeaways running on Facebook
A lot of Cabra’s hair and nail trade lives on a Facebook page with a mobile number in the about box, and most of the chippers and takeaways rely on a delivery app that takes a cut of every order. Both work until they do not: the page goes stale, the app changes its fees, the customer who uses neither cannot find you. A small site of your own, with the menu, the prices, the hours and a button that rings you or opens WhatsApp, is yours and takes no cut. The same goes for the GAA club and the driving instructors whose fixtures and lesson slots live in a group chat.
Plans and price
A Cabra trade or shop pays €499 to set up Essentials and €50 a month after that. Complete, at €1,499 and €100 a month, adds online bookings, payments, review requests and a chat assistant. Both are laid out on the pricing page. The plumbers page shows what we build for a trade that works from a van.