Limerick is three cities that happen to share a name. There is the Georgian centre, O’Connell Street rebuilt with wide footpaths, William Street, Cruises Street and Thomas Street, the Milk Market on a Saturday, the Crescent and the People’s Park, where the independent shops, barbers, cafes and restaurants are. There are the suburbs with centres of their own, Dooradoyle around the Crescent Shopping Centre and the hospital, Castletroy around the University and the Parkway, Caherdavin around the Jetland, Raheen around the business park, each a town in all but name. And there is the student city, spread between UL, Mary Immaculate and TUS, present from September to May and gone for the summer. Website design in Limerick city has to decide which of the three a business belongs to, and say so. We are Dublin based. Limerick clients get the same service as Dublin ones, with the first chat by video or phone instead of in person and the site built from photos and details sent over WhatsApp; there is no Limerick office.
Match day and market day
The city’s week has two fixed points. Saturday morning is the Milk Market, when the streets around Cornmarket Row fill up and the cafes and shops nearby do a week’s trade before lunch. Match day at Thomond Park, and at the Gaelic Grounds when Limerick are at home, fills the pubs on the Ennis Road and in the centre from early afternoon. Both bring people who are not regulars and who search: ‘brunch near Milk Market’, ‘pub near Thomond Park’, ‘taxi Limerick’. The listing that says open, with a photo and a menu, gets them.
Castletroy is not O’Connell Street
A barber in Castletroy and a barber on Catherine Street are in different markets. The Castletroy one serves students in term and the families in the estates around Monaleen and Annacotty all year; the Catherine Street one serves office workers, shoppers and whoever is in town. On Google both compete under ‘barber Limerick’ unless the page says otherwise. The fix is to name the suburb in the title and the first line, carry the V94 routing key on the address, pin the Google Business Profile to the right door and name the neighbouring areas in sentences. A Dooradoyle physio should say Dooradoyle, Raheen and the hospital; a Caherdavin takeaway should say Caherdavin, Clareview and the Ennis Road.
September and the student trade
When the students arrive in September the searches change: ‘barber Castletroy’, ‘nails Limerick’, ‘maths grinds Limerick’, ‘phone screen repair Limerick’, ‘takeaway open late Castletroy’. Students search on the phone, decide on the photos and the price, and go. A takeaway or a salon that relies on a Facebook page or the delivery apps alone has no answer to that search; a page with the menu as text, the prices and a tappable number does. The reverse happens in June, when the student estates empty and the hours should change to suit, from an editing page you control.
Reviews and the old site
Limerick has a lot of sites built a decade ago that are quietly costing their owners: slow on 4G, hours wrong since the pandemic, a menu as a PDF, a phone number you cannot tap. Our ten-minute checklist of signs a website is costing you customers is the place to start. For a barber or a nail salon with a steady chair, the text after the visit with a direct review link is the habit that builds a listing, and our guide on getting more Google reviews explains how to set it up without breaking Google’s rules.
Two plans
Essentials is €499 to set up and €50 a month. Complete is €1,499 and €100 a month and adds bookings, payments, chat, review requests and the monthly Google work. Both exclude VAT and neither has a contract. The pricing page has the comparison, and the barbers page shows what we build for a chair.