A launderette’s customers arrive with a problem in a bag. The washing machine died on Saturday morning, the king-size duvet will not fit in the drum, the suit is needed for Thursday, the student has never used a machine before. Before they come they search “launderette near me” or “dry cleaners open now”, and what they want from websites for launderettes and dry cleaners in Dublin is quick: are you open, what does a load or a suit cost, when will it be ready, and can we park outside with the bags.
We build that page and keep it right, so the hours on Google are the hours on the door.
Who walks in with a bag
Four kinds of people use the same shop, and the page should speak to each. The self-service customer wants to know the machines take card as well as coin, the size of the biggest drum, the price per wash and per dry, and the last wash time. The service wash customer wants a price per bag or per kilo, whether you fold, and whether it is same day if dropped before ten. The dry cleaning customer has a specific item: a wool coat, a wedding dress to be cleaned and boxed, curtains, a leather jacket you send out. The commercial customer, a B&B, a short-let host with three apartments, a restaurant with tablecloths, a football club with kit, wants to know you do it at all and how to set up an account.
Each of those gets a short section with its own prices and its own turnaround, written the way you would say it over the counter.
Hours, prices and “ready by”
Turnaround is the thing people get wrong in their heads. They assume dry cleaning is same day and a service wash takes a week, or the other way round. A plain table of item, price and ready-by time clears it up: shirts washed and pressed by the next day, suits in two to three days, duvets by size, a wedding dress in a couple of weeks because it goes to a specialist. If express costs extra, say so, and people will happily pay it on the day they need it.
Hours deserve the same care. Launderettes open early and close late, often with a different last-wash time to the closing time, and bank holidays catch people out. We set the Google Business Profile with the real hours and the right categories, so you appear for “launderette”, “dry cleaners” and “ironing service” rather than one of them. The listing is where most of your customers meet you first, so we have written a plain guide to setting up a Google Business Profile in Ireland if you want to see what goes into it.
Collection, delivery and the host with three apartments
If you collect and deliver, the page needs the areas and the days: Dublin 6 and 6W on Mondays and Thursdays, say, with a cut-off time for next day. A form lets a customer request a collection with their address, what they are sending and when they are in. On Essentials that request lands in your email and WhatsApp and you confirm it. On Complete the same customer can book a slot and pay by card or Apple Pay when they book, which is how the short-let hosts and the small businesses prefer to work, because they are not standing at your counter with cash.
Those commercial accounts also like an email that looks like a business rather than a personal Gmail. Complete includes an address at your own domain, and how to get business email on your own domain explains what that involves.
The laundry calendar
September fills the self-service machines with students and the dry cleaning rail with the first coats. October and November are duvets and winter wear coming out of the attic. The run-up to Christmas is dresses, suits and tablecloths, and the week after it is the same items coming back. Spring brings curtains and the winter coats going away clean. Summer is the short-let season for anyone doing linen. A line at the top of the page, which you change yourself, tells people “duvets now three days” or “closed Easter Monday” before they set out with the bag.
What you hand us
Your price list for each of the four customers above, with turnaround beside each item. Your hours and your last-wash time. Collection areas and days if you do them. Four photos: the shopfront, the machines (clean and with the lights on), the pressed rail, and the van if you have one. The phone and WhatsApp you want enquiries on. Fifteen minutes at a quiet point in the morning covers it.
Plans
For a launderette with a counter and a rail, Essentials is €499 to set up and €50 a month and includes the page, the .ie domain in your name, hosting, the Google listing and the edit page. Complete, at €1,499 and €100 a month, adds booked and paid collections, business email and monthly posts on your listing. The full comparison is on the pricing page. If you also take in alterations, the thinking on the tailors and alterations page applies to that side of the counter.