Maynooth runs on a different calendar from the rest of Kildare. The town has a Main Street that ends at the Square and the gates of St Patrick’s College, with the ruin of Maynooth Castle beside them and the university campus spreading out on both sides of the old college. From the middle of September to the middle of May the place is full of students. From June to August it is a commuter town with a quieter Main Street, Carton House busy with weddings and golf, and families walking the Royal Canal towpath down by the station.
A business here plans its year around that swing, and website design in Maynooth should too. We are based in Dublin, so for a Maynooth business the first conversation is a phone or video call rather than a visit, and from there the work runs on WhatsApp and email the same as it does for anyone else.
September is the month that matters
Every autumn a new intake arrives who do not know the town. They need a barber, a takeaway that delivers to the campus residences, a bike shop, a pharmacy, a launderette, a landlord, and later in the year a tutor. They do not ask around; they search on the phone in the first week and settle into habits by October. The businesses that appear for “barber Maynooth” or “chipper near Maynooth University” in September keep those customers until May, and then do it again the following year.
The rest of the town searches like any commuter town. People come home on the train from Connolly or Pearse, or off the M4, and look for a plumber, a creche or a Saturday restaurant table at eight in the evening.
Main Street, the Square and the canal
Trade in Maynooth is concentrated: the length of Main Street from the Dublin road to the Square, and the few streets around the Harbour and the station. A shop with correct hours and photos on its Google listing is easy to find from anywhere on the campus in a minute. A shop without a listing, or with last year’s hours on it, loses the person standing fifty metres away. The W23 Eircode covers Maynooth, Celbridge, Leixlip and Kilcock, so the town name on the page has to do the work that the routing key cannot.
Tutors, trainers and the Instagram trades
Maynooth has a lot of businesses that exist only as a social account: grinds tutors working from home or online, personal trainers using the local gyms, music teachers, nail and brow studios in a converted room, students cutting hair for other students. A parent in Kilcock searching for a Leaving Cert chemistry tutor is not on Instagram at that moment; they are on Google. A one page site that says what you teach, at what level, at what price, and how to book, is enough to appear for that search and to stop the stream of WhatsApp messages that currently replaces it. We have written about whether Instagram alone is enough and about setting up a Google Business Profile, which a tutor can do as a service-area listing without publishing a home address.
Pubs, cafes and the summer problem
The pubs and cafes near the campus have the opposite problem to the tutors: plenty of custom from October to April and a slump in the summer. A site with the menu, the hours and bookings for a table lets them chase the summer trade that does exist, the wedding guests at Carton House, the families on the canal, the day visitors to the college and the castle, instead of waiting for September.
What it costs
Essentials is €499 to set up and €50 a month and covers the site, the Google listing and the monthly report. Complete is €1,499 and €100 a month and adds bookings, payments, review requests and chat. Both are on the pricing page, and the grinds tutors page shows what a tutor’s site looks like.