Portlaoise is the town that grew. Twenty five years ago it was a county town with a Main Street, a courthouse, a prison and a station. Then the M7 and the trains to Heuston made it a place where a Dublin salary could buy a house, and estate after estate went up around the old core. The people in those houses are mostly young families, which is why Portlaoise has so many creches, so many takeaways and so many vans. Website design in Portlaoise is mostly for those trades and services, and we do it from Dublin, with no office in Laois. We talk by video or phone, you send photos and details on WhatsApp, and the site is built from them.
A town of new houses and new neighbours
New houses keep trades busy for decades. The snag list becomes the attic conversion, then the kitchen, then the garden room, then the heat pump. A plumber, an electrician, a painter or a kitchen fitter in Portlaoise has a customer base that renews itself as each estate ages, and most of those customers moved here from somewhere else and have no brother-in-law in the trade. They search.
The same is true of the services a young family needs: creche places, childminders, a beauty salon, a personal trainer, driving lessons for the eldest. A town where so many people arrived in the last two decades is a town where reputation has not had time to travel by word of mouth, and the Google listing and the website do that job instead.
The seven o’clock search
Portlaoise searches in the evening. The commuter who noticed the leak at breakfast searches “plumber Portlaoise” on the train from Heuston or at seven when the children are in bed. The parent looking for a creche place searches on a Sunday. The weekend visitor to the Dunamaise searches “restaurant Portlaoise” at six. Very little of this happens in office hours, so the phone number on its own is not enough. An enquiry form that lands in your email and WhatsApp, and a booking button for the salon or the trainer, turn an evening search into a morning job. Our guide on how to take online bookings covers the options.
R32, parking and the Main Street
Portlaoise is R32, and the Eircode goes on the contact page and in the structured data so the pin on Google Maps is right. A newcomer does not know where to leave the car on Main Street, so a shop or a clinic on it should say which car park to use. The two prisons and the Midlands Regional Hospital are big employers with shift patterns, and a takeaway or a barber near them does well to state late or early hours plainly.
A trade that works out to Portarlington, Mountmellick, Stradbally, Abbeyleix and Mountrath should name each of them in the text and set the same places as the service area on the Google Business Profile. Google matches the town in the search to the town on the page. A quick way to see what else may be wrong is our checklist of signs your website is costing you customers.
Businesses running on a Facebook page
A lot of Portlaoise trades have a Facebook page, a van and nothing else. Salons and brow studios book through Instagram messages. Childminders rely on the parents’ WhatsApp groups. That works for the people who already know them, and fails for every new arrival in the next estate, who searches Google and never sees a Facebook page or an Instagram account in the results that matter. A page of your own, with the prices and the enquiry button, is what makes the recommendation findable.
Price for a Portlaoise business
Essentials is €499 to set up and €50 a month. Complete is €1,499 and €100 a month, adding bookings with deposits, card and Apple Pay payments, live chat and monthly work on your Google listing. Details are on the pricing page, and the creches page shows what a childcare site includes.