Booking essentials
How to Build a Website With Online Booking
By Bruno Melani, founder of Gaplessly · · 6 min read
The short answer
A website built separately from its booking tool usually takes one to three weeks to go live.
An all-in-one system for salons, clinics and restaurants can launch the same day, because there is one login, one publish button and no integration step.
What goes into a small-business website with online booking
A search for "how to build a website" mostly returns generic advice: pick a domain, choose a builder, add pages. None of it covers what makes a service business's site different from a brochure site. When you build a website with a booking system, the site's whole job is getting a visitor to a confirmed booking in as few steps as possible.
Most appointment and table-booking businesses need the same short list of pages: home, services or menu, about or team, a photo gallery, contact, and a booking page. The booking page is the one you can't skip, and a contact form is no substitute for it.
- A "contact us to book" page loses bookings. Every extra step between a visitor and a confirmed time costs a share of them, and phone tag is the most expensive step of all.
- A live-availability widget, where visitors see which slots are open and pick one, converts far more of the people who land on the page.
- Branding has to carry through to the booking step. A visitor who clicks "book now" and lands on a generic, unbranded form loses the confidence the rest of the site built.
How long does it take to build a website?
The answer depends on one thing: whether the website and the booking system are one tool or two. Building them separately means a domain registrar, a website builder and a booking tool, then wiring the three together. Each piece is simple enough, but together they add up to three logins, three sets of settings and an embed step that has to be tested. Expect days to a couple of weeks if you're comfortable with the tools, and longer if you're not.
An all-in-one tool puts all of that behind one login: pick a template, add services or tables, connect payments, publish. A first version can be live the same day, since the only work left is filling in your own details.
Almost all of that time difference comes from the integration step a separate booking tool adds. Design and copywriting take about as long either way. When the website and the booking system are one product, there is nothing to integrate.
How to create a website with online booking, step by step
Working in one login, set things up in this order:
- Pick a template and design your pages: colours, fonts, a logo, and your own photos of the business instead of stock images.
- Add your services and staff, or your tables and service periods. This is where the two kinds of business split. An appointments business sets up each service with its duration and the staff who can perform it; a restaurant or venue sets up its floor, table sizes and the service periods it takes bookings for. Neither is website work, and skipping this step is why a bolted-on booking widget so often ends up half-configured.
- Connect payments. Set up a deposit or a card-on-file no-show fee before launch, so it is already in place when the first no-show happens.
- Publish the site and the booking page together, in one action, instead of launching the website first and the booking tool days or weeks later.
- Share the booking link on your Google Maps listing, in social media bios, as a QR code on a printed menu or at reception, or embedded on an existing page if the business already has a website elsewhere.
What a booking system needs beyond the website
"How to make a booking system" is a different question from "how to build a website". The booking button is the part a visitor sees. Behind it, a working system also needs:
- Staff calendars and permissions. Once more than one person takes bookings, each of them needs to see their own calendar without being able to edit everyone else's, and an owner needs to see all of them at once.
- Automated reminders and no-show protection. A confirmation and a reminder cut no-shows on their own, and a deposit or card-on-file fee protects the business on the ones that still happen.
- A branded booking page. The booking step is where a visitor is closest to paying, which makes it the worst place for the page to suddenly look like a different, unbranded product.
- Reporting, and reschedules without phone tag. Staff should be able to drag a booking to a new time on the calendar, and reports should show how the business is doing, which a list of upcoming bookings can't.