Dunboyne is a village that kept its green and gained a railway. The green sits at the centre with the church, the pubs and the shops around it, Main Street runs off it, Dunboyne Castle Hotel is beside it with its weddings and its spa, and the estates reach out towards Clonee, the M3 and the station, which opened in 2010 on the line to Docklands and Connolly. A few minutes east the county line is crossed without noticing and you are in Dublin 15: Clonee, Ongar, Clonsilla, Blanchardstown.
Dunboyne is in Meath, but for most of its businesses the customers are on both sides of that line and the competition is too. Website design in Dunboyne has to work with that geography rather than pretend the village is self-contained. We are in Dublin, so the first chat is a phone or video call; after that the service is the same as it is for a client in Blanchardstown we meet face to face.
Where the custom actually is
Dunboyne households commute. The station takes them to Docklands and the city, the M3 takes them to the M50, and in the evening they come home to a village with a good set of cafes, restaurants, pubs, salons and shops around the green, and search for the rest: “cleaner Dunboyne”, “painter Dunboyne”, “dog walker Dunboyne”, “physio near me”. Dublin 15 is the other half of the market. A barber on Main Street cuts Ongar’s hair; a Dunboyne painter works Castleknock; a cleaner’s week is split across the county line. Those customers search by their own place names, and a page that only says Dunboyne does not meet them.
The green, the hotel and the wedding trade
The castle hotel brings weddings, spa days and business guests into the village all year, and with them searches that the village’s businesses can answer: a florist, a cake maker, a hairdresser or make-up artist on the morning, a taxi, somewhere for the guests to have lunch, a barber for the groomsmen. Those searches name the hotel or the village, and they happen weeks in advance from anywhere in the country. A site with real photos, a starting price and a deposit by card is how a Dunboyne florist or cake maker takes the booking before someone in Dublin 15 does.
Getting the listing right on the border
Dunboyne’s Eircode is A86, which is the village’s own, and that helps. The things that go wrong on the border are the service area and the map pin. A Google Business Profile that says Dunboyne and lists Clonee, Ongar, Clonsilla, Blanchardstown, Castleknock, Maynooth, Dunshaughlin and Ratoath as service areas will appear for those places; one that lists nothing appears for the village alone. We set the profile up with the real service area, put the same places on the site in sentences, and make sure the pin lands on the right door. The guides on setting up a Google Business Profile and getting onto Google Maps explain the steps if you want to see what is involved.
Cafes, dog walkers and the Instagram trades
The cafes around the green, the dog walkers and groomers who work the estates, the home bakers, the cleaners and the painters are mostly on Instagram or Facebook alone, which suits their regulars and loses the newcomers. A one page site with the hours, the prices, the area and a form that lands in WhatsApp is enough to change that, and it does not need to be touched often.
Plans
Essentials is €499 to set up and €50 a month. Complete is €1,499 and €100 a month and adds bookings with deposits, payments, review requests, chat and the monthly Google work. The pricing page compares them line by line, and the florists page shows what a florist’s site includes.