A parent searching for a riding school is working off a child’s wish and a lot of questions. How old do they have to be. What does a lesson cost and how long is it. Do you have hats and boots to lend. Is the arena indoors, because it is February. Are there camps at mid-term. Websites for equestrian centres in Dublin and the counties around it are measured on those questions, and on whether the parent can book the lesson on a Sunday evening without ringing a yard office that is not open until Tuesday.
Lessons, camps, livery
A centre is three businesses and the site keeps them apart. Lessons: beginners, groups and privates, children and adults, by the half hour and the hour, with prices and what to wear. Camps: summer, Easter, the October and February mid-terms, by week, by age, with places and a price. Livery: full, part and DIY, per week, with what is included and whether the yard is full. A fourth section if you have it: pony parties, hacking and trekking, arena hire, shows and clinics.
Each one is a different customer with a different season, and a page that mixes them loses all three. The parent wants camps; the adult returning after twenty years wants a private lesson and reassurance; the livery owner wants to know about turnout and the arenas and does not care about the birthday parties.
The ponies have names
Children choose the centre by the ponies, and parents choose it by the instructors. So the site has a page of the horses and ponies, each with a photo, a name and a line: who they suit, what they are like, how long they have been at the yard. Then the instructors, with their horses, their qualifications and how long they have been teaching. If the centre is AIRE approved, say so where the parent will see it. A page of named ponies does more for a riding school than anything else we build.
Then the yard itself: the indoor arena (which matters more than anything else in an Irish winter), the outdoor arena and its surface, the stables, the tack room, the hacking, the car park and the viewing area where parents wait with a coffee. Photos in daylight, with helmets on every rider.
Camp week bookings and the deposit
Camp bookings used to be a notebook in the office and a bank transfer that arrived when it arrived. On the site each camp week is a page with dates, ages, places left and the price, and the parent books a place, pays a deposit or the full fee by card, and fills in the rider’s details: age, experience, weight for pony allocation, medical notes, emergency contact. A reminder goes out the week before with what to bring. The deposit terms are stated at booking, and how to take deposits online in Ireland covers how to word them fairly.
Lessons work the same way for the slots you choose to make bookable: beginner groups, assessments for new riders, adult evenings. Private lessons and anything that depends on a particular horse can stay by phone. A weather or lameness cancellation goes out by text to everyone in the slot. The booking mechanics are in how to take online bookings.
Vouchers at Christmas, cancellations in January
December sells lesson vouchers to grandparents at odd hours, and the site sells them by card with the centre’s name on them while the office is closed. January is cancellations and frozen arenas, and a line at the top of the page about the weather policy saves the phone. Easter brings the first camp. Summer is camps every week and the lessons that fill from them in September. Autumn is the hunting and showing crowd on livery, and the hats and boots being replaced before the mid-term camp.
A seasonal strip at the top of the page carries the current message, changed from your phone: ‘Summer camp dates now open’, ‘Arena closed Thursday for the show’. The review text after a child’s first lesson is the other steady thing, because a parent who has just watched their child trot for the first time will write a line about it that evening.
The yard hands us
Lesson types and prices, camp weeks with ages and prices, livery prices and what is included, the ponies with names and a line each, the instructors, your approvals and your insurance wording for riders, your weather and cancellation policy, your hours and the office hours, and photos. If the farrier and the vet who look after the yard are happy to be named, we link to them; the farriers page shows how we build for that side of the yard.
Plan and price
Complete is €1,499 to set up and €100 a month, and it is the plan for a centre running lessons and camps: bookings, deposits, vouchers, review texts, the managed listing. Essentials is €499 and €50 a month for a livery yard that needs prices, photos and the Google listing. Centres outside Dublin, which is most of them, start with a phone or video call. The pricing page compares the two.