Use this checklist to prepare your Booking Website Pro site for launch, review key setup steps, and avoid common go-live issues.
Disclaimer: The Booking Website design in Hostaway is being updated to a new version that improves navigation, reduces clutter, and provides a cleaner, more intuitive experience. This update will be available in your dashboard soon. In the meantime, please note that the design and navigation shown in the screenshots may differ from what you currently see in your dashboard. This difference is temporary while the new version is being rolled out.
Building a new website and optimizing for conversion is a project that might seem overwhelming. Our new Booking Website Pro offers a very large catalog of features and configurations that might be overwhelming at first. With this user guide, we intend to provide you with a detailed checklist and step-by-step guide of the main settings we recommend configuring before you are ready to publish.
Remember that creating a website is not a one-time project. Over time, you can iterate, make changes and improvements, and explore the rest of the functionality as you get comfortable with it.
Hostaway Dashboard
Listings
-
Select the listings you want to have displayed in the booking engine:
- Go to the Booking Website > Click on the Booking Website Name
- In the section list, click on Listings
- There you will find two tabs:
- Included. This tab shows the listings that are currently displayed on your booking website
- Excluded. This tab shows the listings that are currently not displayed on your booking website
- There you will find two tabs:
- Click Save
- Go to the Booking Website > Click on the Booking Website Name
Important. When a new listing is created, it will be added to the Booking Website automatically.
For more information about this topic, please check the following articles:
- Additional Listings checklist readiness
Make sure that in the Hostaway dashboard, you have completed as well the following actions:
2.1. Choosing the languages you want to make available for your website users - Follow the localization user guide here
2.2. Optional - Create and assign Listing labels to the listings.
Some ideas to use listings labels and tags:
- By location: Beach, Mountain, City, etc
- Special features: Popular choice, Kid-friendly, etc
- By property type: bungalow, villa, apartment
✅ Pro tip: We highly recommend adding only a few tags per listing. In most cases, that would mean 2-3 tags with not lengthy text. Adding multiple ones will not offer a great user experience, especially in mobile devices, since the multiple tagging will significantly cover the picture area of the user interface.
Pages
- In the Pages section, you must double-check the Booking confirmation and Inquiry received subsections. Within those, you will find text boxes; customize them to your preference. These are the pages that are displayed after a checkout or when an inquiry is sent to you. We offer a template with dynamic fields to give them a more personalized feel.
- Optional - SEO for the individual pages
On the individual pages displayed here, you can also click on the edit button and scroll down, where you can set up a few basic SEO configurations. See this user guide for more.
Settings
- In the Settings tab, make sure to configure the following settings to your preference:
5.1 Display & Content Settings: for Map and review settings
5.2 Reservation Settings: to configure whether you allow instant bookings, inquiries, or both
Website editor
With the basic configurations done in the Hostaway dashboard, you can now open the Site editor to configure other key elements. Click on Site editor to start. Once opened, the editor will automatically display the template you selected.
To get familiar with the Editor, you can read this general introduction user guide.
- Homepage edits
6.1. Edit the content of the homepage template. Your template comes with placeholder text in the different sections. Make sure to scroll down and edit the text. You can also update the placeholder logo.
6.2. Theme: Use the theme tab for all the general customizations. Here you can choose colors, fonts, spacing, and others, and ensure the look and feel matches your brand
6.3. Configure the Book now buttons (in the sticky bar on top, and at the bottom of the template): we want to have your website visitors seamlessly navigate from the homepage to the rest of the website. Click on the button > Manage button and find the Web Address option, where you can copy and paste the URL.
✅ Pro tip: We recommend copying and pasting the URL of the Search Results, so your users already land on a page where they can naturally continue their search.
Please note: if you haven’t published your booking website, you need to do this step after publishing, so the URL is available to you.
6.4. Optional: You are also able to customize the colors of the individual buttons. In this example, select the Search form and then click Design. A side panel will appear where you can customize it.
6.5. Optional: The template is flexible; we curated the default sections based on best practices for optimized conversion. However, feel free to add or remove sections if you prefer anything different.
You can use the ADD menu to customize the sections.
- SEO/AEO: on the builder sidebar, click on the SEO/AEO option. There, you can see a summary of the site’s SEO configuration, and it will highlight if there are any improvements to make. Click on the Fix it option
Then all the fields for the meta tags, for all the different pages you have created, will be shown here.
✅ Pro tip: Click on the "Generate Meta Tags" button, so you get assistance from AI to generate the missing tags automatically. Follow the instructions on the screen to do so. Read more here.
- Languages (only if you have enabled multilanguage in the Hostaway Dashboard): Click on More > Site Languages > Manage Languages. Then click on the Add Language button. Select the same languages that you have configured in the Hostaway dashboard so that the homepage also has the same languages available for the users. Click on DONE when you are ready.
| Hostaway Dashboard | Website Builder |
Some last tips and details
- Remember that in the site editor, you are editing only the styling of the homepage, about us, contact us, and the custom pages you create using the site editor. We highly recommend also going to the Hostaway dashboard > Design, and adjusting the colors there for the rest of the pages (property pages, All listings page, etc). That way, your users will provide your website visitors with a more consistent experience.
- Make sure you upload a favicon and logo to both the Hostaway dashboard and in the Editor, so the navigation across the website's pages is consistent.
| Hostaway Dashboard | Website Builder (click on MORE) |
- Update the logo navigation in the Hostaway to your homepage URL, so your users can easily navigate back to your homepage, and the experience is seamless.
- Add the same Google Analytics IDs to both the Hostaway dashboard and Website editor. This will ensure you track the users across the homepage and the rest of the pages of the website.
| Hostaway Dashboard | Website Builder (in the MORE option) |