Dublin 1 is the half of the city centre north of the Liffey: O’Connell Street and the GPO in the middle, Henry Street and Mary Street running west to the Jervis Centre, Talbot Street running east to Connolly, Parnell Street and Capel Street lined with restaurants, and the IFSC and the north quays at the river end. It is the district most people pass through without stopping, which is both the problem and the opportunity for website design in Dublin 1. We are based in Dublin and we meet owners here in the shop, usually in the slow hour after lunch.
A week on the north side
Monday to Friday the district fills from outside. Trains into Connolly, buses into Busáras, the red Luas along Abbey Street and the green line down O’Connell Street put people onto the footpaths every morning, and most of them have a barber, a dry cleaner, a phone repair shop and a lunch place somewhere between the station and the office. Saturday is Henry Street’s day, when the suburbs come in to shop and the Moore Street stalls are at their loudest. Sunday belongs to the hotels: visitors on O’Connell Street and Gardiner Street looking for breakfast, a haircut before the flight, somewhere to eat tonight. Parnell Street and Capel Street carry the evenings all week, with the Chinese, Korean and Brazilian kitchens and the bars between them.
Finding a shop you walk past every day
The odd thing about Dublin 1 is that the customer may have walked past your door a hundred times without registering it. When they finally need you, they search. ‘Barber Talbot Street’, ‘alterations Dublin 1’, ‘nails near Jervis’, ‘taxi Connolly Station’, typed into Google Maps on the walk from the train. Visitors do the same from the hotel room, with the added habit of reading every review. Neither group asks a neighbour, because neither has one here. The result shows a map, three names, hours and a star rating, and the business that is correct and open gets the walk-in.
What the page needs to say
Dublin 1 addresses confuse Google when they are vague. ‘Near O’Connell Street’ is not an address. The page and the Google Business Profile need the street, the number, the D01 routing key and the Eircode, with the same opening hours on both. Mention the nearest Luas stop (Jervis, Abbey Street, Marlborough or Parnell) and whether you are two minutes from Connolly, because that is how people here measure distance. For a restaurant, the menu as text on the page, not a photo of a printed one. For a barber or a nail bar, the price list and a booking button, because the office worker wants to book half past one from a desk at ten. For a guesthouse, a direct booking route, so the guest who found you on a booking site can come straight back to you next time. The Google Business Profile guide covers the listing side step by step.
Running on Facebook and word of mouth
Plenty of long-standing Dublin 1 businesses have never had a page: the tailors and shoe repairers tucked into side streets, the launderettes, the taxi firms around the stations, the cafes that open at six for the early shift. They have lived on passing trade and a Facebook page last updated years ago. A single clear page with the hours, a phone button and five real photos is a day’s work for us and years of being findable for them. The barbers page and the takeaways page show what we build for two of the most common Dublin 1 shops, and the full list of trades covers the rest.
Neighbours and price
Dublin 1 runs into the Docklands at the IFSC and North Wall, into Smithfield and Dublin 7 west of Capel Street, and into Dublin 3 at the Five Lamps. A trade based here that works across all of them (a locksmith, a cleaning company, a man with a van) should name those places on the site rather than hoping ‘Dublin’ covers it. Essentials costs €499 to set up and then €50 a month. Complete, with bookings, payments and the monthly Google work, is €1,499 and then €100. Both are laid out on the pricing page, without VAT and without a contract.