Greystones grew fast. The old village is still there along Church Road and down to the harbour, but around it are Charlesland to the south, the new estates on the Delgany side, the apartments at the marina, and streets of houses where there were fields not long ago. The DART ends here, the N11 is a few minutes away, and a large share of the people who live here get up early and go to Dublin to work.
For the businesses here, that means a customer who is new, busy and used to doing everything on a phone. Website design in Greystones is less about explaining what you do and more about being correct and bookable at 9pm on a Sunday when the week is being planned. Greystones is outside Dublin, so the first conversation with us is a phone or video call. After that it works the same as for any client: ten minutes of your details, a site live within days, changes by WhatsApp.
A town where nobody inherited a hairdresser
In a settled town people go where their mother went. In Greystones many households arrived in the last decade or so, and they chose their dentist, their physio, their cafe and their childminder by searching and reading reviews. That habit does not stop once they are settled. “Dentist Greystones”, “yoga Greystones”, “deli Church Road”, typed in Google Maps, with the reviews read before the call is made.
The local Facebook groups and the school WhatsApp groups are the other half of it. A recommendation there gets googled within the minute, and the business with a real page and recent reviews is the one that converts the recommendation into a booking.
Three parts of one town
Greystones sits in the A63 routing key area, shared with Kilcoole and Delgany, and a business here serves at least three distinct places: the old village around Church Road and the harbour, Charlesland and the south end, and Delgany and the new estates on the hill. A site that names all three in ordinary sentences gives Google what it needs to show you for each. For trades, add Kilcoole, Newcastle, Bray and Newtownmountkennedy, the places you actually drive to.
Parking on Church Road is limited and the harbour car parks fill on sunny days, so say where to park and how far you are from the DART station. For a clinic or a studio, say whether there is a wait for new patients and what the first appointment costs. Those two sentences save you phone calls every week.
The delis, boutiques and clinics that run on Instagram
Greystones has a lot of businesses that look like they have a website and do not: a deli with a beautiful Instagram grid, a boutique that sells through stories, a pilates studio taking bookings by direct message, an interior designer whose portfolio lives in a highlights reel. Instagram shows the work to people who already follow you. Google shows it to the family who moved into Charlesland last month. You need both, and the second needs a page you own. Our guide on whether you need a website if you have Instagram goes through the trade-offs honestly.
What it costs
Essentials is €499 to set up and €50 a month, with the site, hosting, the .ie domain in your name and a verified Google Business Profile included. Complete is €1,499 and €100 a month and adds bookings with deposits, payments, chat and monthly Google work. Both are on the pricing page, and the cafes page shows what a food business site includes.