Kells is a town the main road used to run through and now runs past. Before the M3 opened, everything bound for Cavan and the north-west came down Farrell Street and round by Market Street, and the shops lived partly on that passing trade. The motorway took it away. What is left is the town’s own business: the farms of north Meath that come in to shop, the families in the estates off the Navan and Oldcastle roads, the trades who work out of vans, and the visitors who stop for the round tower, the high crosses and the Spire of Lloyd. Website design in Kells, as we see it, is about the trade that is searched for rather than driven past. We are based in Dublin and we work with Kells businesses remotely: a video call to begin, WhatsApp from then on, and a site built from the photos and details you send us. There is no Halfpenny office in Kells.
What the bypass did to Market Street
A shop on Market Street or Farrell Street used to be seen by everyone heading north. Now it is seen by the people who already know Kells and by the ones who looked it up. Being correct on Google Maps, with hours that match the door and a few photos of the actual shopfront, now does the job the through traffic used to do.
Farm country in every direction
Kells sits in the middle of working land. Carnaross, Moynalty, Carlanstown, Nobber, Oldcastle and Athboy are all a short drive, and the Cavan border is not much further. Agricultural contractors, machinery repair yards, vets with a large animal round, fuel suppliers and fencing crews work this ground, and most of them have a Facebook page, a phone number and nothing else.
Their customers are changing under them. The farmer who has used the same contractor for thirty years does not need a website. The couple who bought a house on an acre outside Carlanstown and need a septic tank emptied or a stove fitted do. They search “septic tank Kells” and ring whoever looks real. A plain page that names the villages you cover, shows a few jobs and has a button that rings you is enough to be that person. We set the Google Business Profile up as a service area business so that it shows for the villages too; our guide to setting up a Google Business Profile in Ireland shows what is involved.
Visitors, the heritage centre and the Headfort estate
Kells gets a steady run of visitors for the crosses and the tower, and the Headfort estate brings golfers to the course and parents to the school on the edge of town. Those people are new to Kells every time. They want lunch, a pint, a bed or a tyre fixed, and they look for it from a phone on Market Street, choosing from what Google and ChatGPT show them. A cafe or a pub with a proper page, a current menu and the right hours catches that trade. One that lives on Instagram alone is invisible to the visitor who does not follow it. Our guide on whether Instagram is enough on its own covers what a page does that the app cannot.
A82, and the places around it
Kells carries the A82 routing key. A Kells business should say Kells, Co. Meath plainly on the site and on the Google listing, with the address written the same way in both. Trades that work into Navan, Athboy, Oldcastle or across into Cavan should give each of those places a sentence, because a search from Oldcastle is answered by the page that mentions Oldcastle, not the one that says north Meath.
Plans
Essentials is €499 to set up and €50 a month: the site, a .ie domain in your name, hosting, the Google listing set up and verified, and changes by WhatsApp. Complete is €1,499 and €100 a month and adds bookings, payments, review requests, chat and monthly work on the Google listing. Both are on the pricing page, and the rural trades we build for are under websites for.