Carrigaline was a village on the Owenabue within living memory and has grown into one of the county’s biggest towns, full of estates built for people who work in the city, in Ringaskiddy and in Douglas. Main Street still has the shape of the village, with the river beside it and the road running on to Crosshaven and the harbour, but the trade is a town’s trade: takeaways, creches, hairdressers, physios, and a dozen kinds of tradesperson in vans parked outside new houses. Website design in Carrigaline is mostly for those people, and for the services young families go looking for. We should say straight away that we are in Dublin. There is no Halfpenny office in Carrigaline or anywhere in Cork; we talk by video or phone, you send us what we need over WhatsApp, and we build from that.
Seven in the evening
The pattern of a commuter town shows in when people search. The N28 into the city is slow in the morning and slow again coming home, and a house in Carrigaline is empty from half seven until six. The boiler that will not fire, the leak under the sink, the gate that will not close: those get noticed at seven in the evening and searched for at a quarter past, on a phone, ‘plumber Carrigaline’, ‘electrician near us’. The person searching wants a local name, a mobile number they can tap and a few photos of real work. A Facebook page does not appear in that search. A proper page with a Google Business Profile behind it does.
The same evening search is where the creche, the dance class, the swimming lessons and the Saturday football get found, by parents who have just moved onto the estate and know nobody yet.
A patch, not a point
A trade based here works Carrigaline, Crosshaven, Fountainstown, Myrtleville, Minane Bridge, Ballygarvan, Passage West and often Douglas, and the site needs to say so one place at a time, because Google matches a search from Crosshaven to a page that mentions Crosshaven. A single line saying all areas covered matches nothing. The routing key is P43, and it goes on the contact page and in the structured data behind it, matched exactly to the Google listing so there is one version of your address everywhere.
The harder problem is Douglas and the city. A searcher in Carrigaline sees results from the whole south side of Cork, and a business that says plainly it is in Carrigaline, with photos taken in Carrigaline, stands out from one that is vaguely Cork.
Shift work at Ringaskiddy
The pharmaceutical plants and the port at Ringaskiddy mean a good share of the town works shifts, and a barber, a physio or a takeaway that opens early, or late, or on a Sunday should make that obvious in the hours Google shows. Nothing loses a customer faster than a listing that says closed while the door is open.
Where we start
We set up the Google Business Profile properly first, because for a Carrigaline trade that is where the calls come from, and the site exists to back it up with the detail: services, areas, photos, a form that lands in your WhatsApp. The steps are in our guide on setting up a Google Business Profile in Ireland. If you already have a site and are not sure it is working, our checklist of signs a website is costing you customers takes ten minutes on your own phone.
Price
Essentials is €499 to set up and €50 a month, no contract. Complete is €1,499 and €100 a month and adds bookings, payments, chat and monthly Google work. The pricing page has the full list, and the plumbers page shows the trade version.