The dress goes up on your Instagram story at nine on a Tuesday night and the first message lands before you have put the phone down: “Is that in a 14? Can you hold it until Saturday? Do you post to Cork?” Instagram brings the customer to the door. The questions are where the sale is won or lost, and most boutique owners are answering them from the kitchen at half ten. Websites for clothes boutiques in Dublin should take the first round of those questions off your hands and leave you the ones that need a person.
What they want to know before they drive over
The brands you carry, because people search by label with “stockist” and “Dublin” after it. The size range you stock, said plainly, including where it stops, so nobody makes a wasted trip. Whether you lean towards occasion wear or everyday.
A sentence on where your prices sit. Whether you post, what it costs, and how exchanges work. Parking, and whether you are open on a Sunday. If you do appointments for a mother of the bride or a Debs dress, say so and let them book one.
The messages at half ten
On Complete the site has a chat box trained only on your own details: brands, sizes, hours, posting, exchanges, parking. It answers those on its own. “Is it in a 14” needs you, so it hands the conversation across to your WhatsApp with everything said so far attached, and you reply when you are back in the shop. You stop retyping the posting arrangements twenty times a week, and the customer gets an answer at ten past nine instead of the next afternoon.
The year in a boutique
Communion and Confirmation outfits from March into June. Wedding guests from spring to October. Debs in August and September. The races, and the Christmas party season from late November. January sales, and then the new season landing while the sale rail is still out. Each of those is a sentence and two photos on the page at the right time, which you do yourself on the edit page, and on Complete your Google listing gets the same post so the search result shows what is in this week rather than what was in last spring.
Photographs that change weekly
Your own phone pictures beat studio shots here: the new rail on a Monday, the window, the changing room, an outfit on the mannequin with the price tag turned round. New arrivals go on the site the way they go on Instagram, three or four at a time, and the old ones come down. We set it up so that takes a minute, and the whole site is built to be looked at on a phone, because that is where your customers are.
We have written out what Instagram does and does not do for a shop, and the short version is that Google does not read your grid, and a person who searched for a boutique near them wants your hours before they want a Reel.
Vouchers, holds and small payments
Gift vouchers are the easiest sale a boutique has: the partner who dares not choose, the sister in Australia, the office collection. On Complete they are sold on the site at any hour by card, Apple Pay or Google Pay, arrive by email, and the money lands in your account. The same payments let you take a small deposit to hold a dress until Saturday, sent as a link on WhatsApp, which ends the item being kept back for someone who never comes in.
Reviews and your regulars
A boutique runs on regulars and the people they bring, and new customers look at your Google reviews before they look at anything else. A text after a purchase with the direct review link, sent by the system rather than by you remembering, keeps the reviews recent. A jeweller has the same customer and the same reliance on word of mouth. If you send alterations out, say who does them; we write for tailors and alterations shops too, and the two trades feed each other.
Ten minutes and a rail of photos
Your brand list, your size range, your hours, the posting and exchange wording, the voucher amounts you want to offer, your Instagram handle, fifteen photos, and whether you take appointments. We come to the shop, usually on a Monday or Tuesday morning when it is quiet.
The plan
Complete at €1,499 to set up and €100 a month gives you the chat box, the vouchers, the review texts and the managed Google listing. Essentials at €499 and €50 covers the site, the brands and the photos for a shop that is happy answering every message itself. Both are laid out on the pricing page.