The N4 out of Lucan at eight in the morning is a slow crawl, and most of the people in it are going somewhere else to work. That is the shape of the place. Lucan grew from a village on the Liffey into a large town of estates over a few decades, estate after estate up the hill from the old bridge and Main Street, then Griffeen and Adamstown out towards the Kildare border, with its own train station and more still being built. The people who live here are young, busy, and often new to the area. Website design in Lucan is about reaching them in the gaps in that day. We are Dublin based and we come out to Lucan to meet owners at the premises.
Searching from the queue
Lucan people search in the gaps: on the bus down the N4, on the train from Adamstown, at the desk at lunch, and in the hour after the kids are asleep. The searches are practical. “Creche Lucan” from someone due back at work. “Gym Lucan” in January. “Plumber Lucan” at ten at night with a towel under the sink. “Driving lessons Lucan” for the eldest. “Dentist Adamstown” from a family that moved in last year and has not found one yet.
They are also, more than in older parts of the city, searches by people who have nobody to ask. The settled Lucan of the village and the older estates has its word of mouth. Griffeen and Adamstown are full of households that arrived in the last few years, and they find everything through Google Maps and the local Facebook groups. For them a business that is not on the map does not exist.
A village at the bottom of the hill
Lucan village is small and handsome, on the river by the bridge and the weir, with Main Street running up from it. It has the pubs, cafes, a few restaurants, pharmacies, hair and beauty, and the professional offices a town needs, and it is where the older trade of the area is. The shopping centre and the parades up in the estates carry the day-to-day shopping, and Liffey Valley on the far side of the N4 takes the big trips.
For a village business the page has to make the case for the trip down the hill: parking, the exact spot, what you have that the centre does not. For a business in the estates it has to pin the right parade, because “Lucan” on its own covers several kilometres and a search from Adamstown should not send someone to Dodsboro. Lucan has no Dublin postal number, and its Eircodes begin with K78, so a Lucan page cannot lean on a district number the way the inner suburbs do. It has to say Lucan, and say which part.
Young families, new houses, Instagram
Lucan has an enormous number of businesses run by and for young families, many of them from home: childminders, cake makers, personal trainers, beauticians doing nails and brows in a converted garage, party entertainers, dog walkers and groomers, cleaners. Nearly all of them run on Instagram and the Facebook groups. That is a fine way to serve the people who already follow you. It does nothing for the family who moved to Griffeen in June and searched “childminder Lucan” the same week.
A simple site with the services, the prices, the area you cover and a booking or enquiry button gives you a place in that search. If you already take bookings through Fresha or Booksy, we connect it rather than replace it.
Plans and what they cost
Essentials is €499 to set up and €50 a month, covering the site, hosting, a .ie domain registered to you and a verified Google Business Profile. Complete, at €1,499 and €100 a month, adds online bookings with reminders and deposits, payments, review requests and live chat, which is what a gym taking memberships or a creche taking deposits usually needs. The comparison is on pricing.