On a sunny Saturday the DART empties onto Howth harbour all afternoon and the West Pier fills with people deciding where to eat. On a wet Tuesday in January the same pier belongs to the fish shops, the boats and the locals, and Main Street climbing away from the harbour is quiet. Running a business here means living inside that swing, and website design in Howth has to be built for the visitor who has never been before as much as for the regular. Most of those visitors do their choosing on the phone, on the pier, in the minute before they get hungry enough to walk into the nearest door. We are based in Dublin and we come out on the DART to meet you at the premises.
How the day tripper decides
They search “seafood Howth”, “fish and chips Howth” or just “restaurant near me” while standing at the harbour. Google shows a map, a rating, a price level and whether you are open right now. If the hours are wrong because you changed them for winter and never updated the listing, you lose that table to the place next door. If the menu is a photo on Instagram from two summers ago, you lose the person checking for a vegetarian option before they commit.
Foreign visitors add another layer. Many arrive with a hotel’s advice and a list from ChatGPT or a travel site, and the tools that produce those lists read websites, Google listings and reviews. A page that states plainly what you serve, when, and where you are relative to the DART and the pier is what they can work with. We have written about what AI search means for a local business without the hype.
The year has a shape
Summer weekends and bank holidays are the peak. The market by the station brings weekend trade in its own right. December matters to anyone selling fish. January and February are quiet, and that is when a site earns its keep differently: a photographer filling the spring diary, a B&B taking shoulder-season bookings, a boat operator taking deposits for Ireland’s Eye trips before the season starts.
The hours and the offer change through that year, so the site has to be easy to change: you open a private edit page from your phone, change the hours or the menu, and it is live.
What the page must carry for a Howth business
For a restaurant or cafe: today’s hours, the menu as text, a booking button, and an honest line about parking (the harbour car parks fill on good days, and the DART is right there). For a B&B or holiday home: rooms, prices, a direct booking option so you are not paying commission on every night, and the walk to the cliff path and the harbour described in plain words. For boat trips and tours: departure times, what the weather does to them, how to pay a deposit, and where exactly to stand.
For the fish shops: hours, phone orders, and a note on Christmas ordering. Behind all of it, the structured data that tells Google and the AI tools what kind of business you are and that you are in Howth, Dublin 13.
Reviews carry the village
A tourist town runs on reviews, and the ones you get are the ones you ask for. On Complete a text or email goes out after each visit or stay with a direct link to your Google review page, and we draft replies for you to approve. Nothing is faked or bought; that is against Google’s rules and Irish consumer law. How to get more Google reviews covers the method in full.
Plans for the harbour
Essentials is €499 to set up and €50 a month. Complete is €1,499 and €100 a month and adds bookings, deposits, payments and the monthly Google work, which is the plan most harbour businesses need. Both are on the pricing page, and the restaurants page shows the detail.