At six o’clock on a July evening in Kenmare, everybody staying in the town is looking at a phone and deciding where to eat. Kenmare has built a reputation on food out of all proportion to its size, and that reputation is tested every night on Henry Street and Main Street, the two sides of the triangle the town was laid out in, with Shelbourne Street closing the third side and the Square at the top. It is also a junction. The Ring of Kerry comes in from Sneem and leaves for Killarney over Moll’s Gap, and the Ring of Beara crosses the suspension bridge and heads out along the far side of the bay.
Website design in Kenmare is a matter of that six o’clock decision and of the tourist who is planning the two rings from a kitchen table in another country. We are based in Dublin and we work with Kenmare businesses remotely, over a video call and WhatsApp, with the site built from the photos and details you send. There is no office in the town and we are not going to imply one.
Winning the table at six
“Restaurant Kenmare”, “Kenmare dinner tonight”, “best pub food Kenmare”. The visitor types one of those, looks at the first handful of results on Google Maps, checks the photos and the menu, looks for a way to book, and books the first one that lets them. A restaurant with its menu in text on its own page, tonight’s hours correct, and a booking button that works on a phone wins that search. One with a photo of a menu board from two summers ago does not.
Two rings, one bay, and the county line
Kenmare’s customers come off two circuits and from two counties. The Beara side turns into Cork a few miles past Lauragh, and a trade or a shop here serves Ardgroom, Eyeries and Castletownbere as readily as it serves Sneem or Templenoe. The site should name those places honestly, in sentences, with the V93 Eircode and Co. Kerry in the address, so that the search from a holiday house on Beara and the one from the Killarney road both find you. The Google Business Profile carries the same service area.
A season with a long tail
The season runs from Easter to the end of October, with walkers on the Kerry Way and golfers stretching it at both ends and the Fair Day on the fifteenth of August filling the town. Winter is quiet and some places close. Visitors planning an April trip search for Kenmare in January, and the page they find needs to tell them what will be open when they come. Seasonal hours, a reopening date and a note on which rooms or tours run in the shoulder months belong on the site and on Google.
Direct bookings for the rooms
Kenmare has hotels at the very top of the market and B&Bs and guesthouses along every road out of the Square. For the smaller places, a visitor who books on your own page, having found real photos of the room and the view down the bay, pays you the whole rate rather than a share of it to a listing site. The page needs the dates, the price, a card payment and a confirmation, and we have written about how to take online bookings if you want the detail.
Crafts, lace and the galleries on Henry Street
Kenmare’s craft shops, jewellers, galleries and the lace the town is known for often sell on Instagram and at the market on the Square. The visitor who would buy from them searches “Kenmare crafts” months before and finds whoever has a page. A simple site with the work, the prices and the shop hours is enough to be found.
Plans
Essentials is €499 to set up and €50 a month. Complete is €1,499 and €100 a month and includes table and room bookings, deposits, payments and the monthly Google work. The pricing page lists everything, and the restaurants page goes through table bookings and menus in text.