Booking Website Pro: Launch Checklist – Hostaway

Use this checklist to prepare your Booking Website Pro site for launch, review key setup steps, and avoid common go-live issues.

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 tabs, click on Listings > Tick the box of the listings you would like to publish
- Click Save

Use the toggle to automatically add new ones to the website:

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 categories to the listings. Some ideas to use categories for:

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 categories per listing. In most cases, that would mean 2-3 categories 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.

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.

Some last tips and details

Remember that in the editor, you are editing only the styling of the homepage 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.

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)