Drogheda is big enough to have everything twice. There is a barber on West Street and another in every estate on both sides of the river; a garage on the Donore Road and another off the North Road; a physio near the hospital and another in a converted house on the Dublin Road. One of the biggest towns in the country has every trade, most of them in competition with each other, and that is the thing to understand before anyone talks about website design in Drogheda. The question here is rarely whether a customer can find a dentist. It is which dentist they find first. We are based in Dublin, an hour down the M1, and we work with Drogheda businesses remotely: a video call to start, WhatsApp for everything after, and the site built from the photos and details you send. We do not keep an office in the town.
How Drogheda shops now
The centre is West Street and Laurence Street, meeting at the Tholsel, with St Laurence’s Gate at the far end and Shop Street and Peter Street running off them. Then the shopping centres: Laurence Town Centre by the Gate, Scotch Hall across the footbridge on the south bank, and the retail parks on the edges by the M1 and the Dublin Road. People use all three kinds of place and they decide between them on a phone. “Barber Drogheda” brings up a map with three names on it. “Nail salon near me” from the Scotch Hall car park shows a different three than it does from the hospital. Reviews carry more weight here than in a small town because there is always an alternative two streets away, and recent reviews with replies beat more years on the street and nothing on Google. Our guide to getting more Google reviews is the plain version of how to do that properly.
North side, south side and the county line
The Boyne splits the town and the viaduct and the bridges stitch it back together, but the two sides keep their own habits. The hospital, the Gate and most of the old centre are north of the river. The train station, Scotch Hall, Millmount and the Donore Road industrial estate are south, and the southern estates run over the county line into Meath without anyone noticing except the council. A business on the south side should still say Drogheda first, with the A92 routing key, which covers the whole town and the coast at Bettystown, and a line about which side of the river you are on and where to park. Customers from the north side will cross the river for a good mechanic. They will not cross it for one they cannot find on a map.
What the site has to carry
For a trade: the places you cover, which in Drogheda means the town plus Bettystown, Laytown, Termonfeckin, Clogherhead, Duleek and Slane, each named plainly; photos of real jobs; a from-price where you can give one; a number that rings. For a barber, a salon, a physio or a dentist: hours, a price list, the team, and a booking that can be made at eleven at night. For a restaurant: the menu as text rather than a photo of a printed one, hours that include the bank holidays, and the nearest car park. To check your own site against a plain list, read the signs a website is costing you customers.
Commuters and shift workers
The commuters on the Dublin trains search on the way home for the things they need at the weekend. The hospital runs around the clock, and its staff look for a taxi, a takeaway or a physio at hours when most shops are shut, so the hours on your listing need to be true rather than hopeful.
Price for a Drogheda business
Essentials is €499 to set up and €50 a month. Complete is €1,499 and €100 a month and adds bookings, deposits, payments, review requests, chat and the monthly Google work that a competitive town rewards. The pricing page lists everything, and the mechanics page shows what we build for a garage.