By ten on a Saturday morning the Crescent in Monkstown is full. Swimmers back from Seapoint with wet hair and a towel, buggies outside the cafes, a queue at the deli, people reading the boards outside the restaurants for later. The village is a curve of shops and places to eat below the church at the top of the hill, and food is most of what it sells. Website design in Monkstown is largely for the people who make and serve it, and for the salons, the pharmacy and the small shops in between.
The weekday is quieter and more local: Monkstown Farm and the roads up towards Deansgrange on one side, Seapoint and the sea on the other, the Salthill and Monkstown station and Seapoint station both within a walk. We are Dublin based and we meet Monkstown owners at the counter or the pass, usually mid-afternoon when there is a gap.
Dinner is decided on a phone
A table in Monkstown on a Friday is chosen the way a table anywhere is chosen now: someone types “restaurants Monkstown” or “dinner near Seapoint” at six o’clock, looks at the map results, opens two or three, and books whichever shows a menu with prices and a way to book without ringing. If your page is a PDF menu from last year behind a link that does not work on a phone, you are the third one they open and the second one they close.
Cafes and delis get the same treatment earlier in the day, from the DART platform and from the car. Hours matter most. A cafe that Google says is open on a bank holiday Monday and is not loses more than the morning’s trade; it earns a one-star review from someone who walked up from the station.
Pins, hours and the two DART stations
Monkstown’s Eircodes start with A94, like Blackrock, and the village is easy to confuse with the Monkstown in Cork when someone searches with location switched off. So the site should say Monkstown, Co Dublin, name the Crescent or the road you are on, and mention Seapoint and the stations. Your Google Business Profile needs the pin on your door and hours that are updated every time you change them, which on Complete is something you text us and we do.
For the salons and the studios the booking link is the whole game. How to take online bookings explains the systems we connect or build in, and why a deposit on a Saturday slot is normal now.
Food businesses without a page
Monkstown has bakers, caterers and cake makers who sell through Instagram and a delivery slot, supper clubs that announce dates in stories, yoga and pilates teachers who fill a class through WhatsApp. It works until someone who is not already following them wants to find them. A one-page site with the dates, the prices, a deposit button and a .ie domain is the difference between being known and being findable, and it leaves the Instagram account for the photographs it is good at.
When the weekend brings a sour review along with the trade, how to reply to bad Google reviews has the calm version of what to say.
The two plans
Essentials is €499 to set up and €50 a month: site, domain, hosting, the Google listing, a self-edit page for the specials, and changes by WhatsApp. Complete is €1,499 and €100 a month and adds bookings with deposits, card payments, review requests after each visit and live chat. Everything is on the pricing page, and the restaurants page shows what a food business here tends to use.