Your booking website: design, text and sections that win guests over
By GuestChat Team ·
Having your own website doesn't help much if it looks like a brochure from ten years ago, or if visitors can't tell in five seconds why they should book with you and not on a booking site. My website gives you the structure; what wins guests over are the choices you make at each step.
Where it is and how it works
In your profile menu, open My website. On the left you have the steps: Design, Content, Places, Bookings, Sections, Reviews, Deals, Contact and Web address. On the right is the preview, on desktop or on mobile.
A trick few people use: you can click any text or photo in the preview to change it right there. Everything saves on its own.
Design
Four templates: Costa (light and bright), Urbano (dark, photos stand out), Boutique (warm, earthy tones) and Minimal (white and direct). Colors and fonts come together and are already checked to be easy to read, so you don't need to pick colors one by one. You also choose the font and the button size.
Pick based on your photos, not your taste: if your photos are bright, go with Costa or Minimal; if they're interiors with character, Urbano or Boutique.
Content
- Your name or company, plus your logo if you have one.
- Headline: the first thing people read. The place and the promise work better than your name.
- Subtitle: one or two lines about what you offer.
- Cover photo: if you leave it empty, the first photo of your first property is used. You can add a few more so they rotate.
- About us: who you are and why it's worth staying with you. A name and a photo of you feel more personal than a logo.
- Why book direct: three or four reasons. If you list with a markup on the booking sites, one of them is obvious.
Places
You choose which properties show up; if you don't tick any, all your active properties are shown. For each one you decide the name people see, whether to show the price per night, and whether to show the full address. That last one is off by default, because it's the address of a home with self check-in. The map can show an approximate area or the exact spot.
Sections
Turn off what you don't need and move the rest around. You can add a block of your own below any other one and write in it from the preview.
Contact and Google
In Contact you set who visitors are writing to (a person's name sounds like a person, not a company), plus your email and phone. Right there you'll find How it looks on Google: the title and description that show up in search results. If you leave them empty, your headline is used.
Languages
Your website shows in Spanish, English, French and German. Write in your own language and the rest is translated automatically when you publish.
Publishing
Use Publish website the first time; after that, Publish changes. If you have saved changes that aren't published yet, the dashboard reminds you that visitors still see the previous version. See live opens it exactly as a visitor sees it, and Discard changes goes back to the published version.
Checklist before you publish
- A headline that says where and who it's for.
- At least one good photo per property.
- Reasons to book direct.
- Contact details with your name.
- A title and description for Google.
- A full look at the mobile preview: that's where a lot of people will see it.