Leopardstown is offices on one side and a racecourse on the other, with the Luas running between them. The green line stops at Central Park, Glencairn, The Gallops, Leopardstown Valley, Ballyogan Wood and Racecourse, and around those stops are the office campus at Central Park, the apartment schemes that have filled the fields since the 2000s, Leopardstown Valley shopping centre by the stop of the same name, and the Sandyford Business District spilling over from next door. Website design in Leopardstown is mostly for the businesses that serve people who work here, live here or both: gyms, physios, cafes, creches, dentists, beauty rooms, cleaners and IT people.
It is Dublin 18 and the M50 is at the end of the road, so a fair share of the traffic is in cars too. We are Dublin based and we meet owners in the unit, the studio or over a coffee near the Luas.
Lunchtime, six o’clock and race days
Trade here runs to the office clock. The cafes and the lunch places are searched at 11.45 from a desk in Central Park: “lunch near me”, “coffee Leopardstown”. The physios, the gyms and the personal trainers get 12.30 and 5.45 bookings from people who want to be done before the Luas home. The creches and the dentists are searched at nine at night by someone in one of the apartments, and the cleaners and the IT support by the same people on a Sunday.
Then there are the race days. The Christmas festival between Christmas and New Year, the Dublin Racing Festival in February and the summer evening meetings bring crowds to the Racecourse stop who search for a drink, a taxi and somewhere to eat on the way home. It is a few days a year, but on those days your Google hours had better be right.
Luas stops, car parks and D18
Leopardstown’s Eircodes start with D18, which it shares with Sandyford, Foxrock, Cabinteely and Stepaside, and people describe where things are by the Luas stop or the business park rather than by road. So the site should name the stop you are nearest to, the campus or centre you are in, whether there is parking and whether that parking is free after six. The Google Business Profile needs the pin on the right building, which in a campus of similar blocks is a real problem, and hours that match your actual door.
For a booking business the booking link is the point of the page. How to take online bookings explains the systems we connect or build in, with deposits and reminders.
The businesses inside the apartment blocks
A lot of Leopardstown’s smallest businesses have no front door: personal trainers who use the residents’ gym, beauticians and nail technicians working from an apartment, cleaners with a round of twenty flats, childminders, tutors, someone who fixes laptops. They live on Instagram, Facebook and a WhatsApp number passed between neighbours, and none of that is visible to someone in the next block typing “nails near Central Park” into Google or asking ChatGPT where to get a lash lift in Leopardstown. What AI search means for a local business explains what those tools read, and it is the same things Google reads: a page with facts on it.
Cost and plans
Essentials is €499 to set up and €50 a month. Complete is €1,499 and €100 a month and adds bookings, payments, review requests, live chat and the managed Google profile. The pricing page has it all, and the gyms page shows what a studio or a gym around the Luas tends to need.