A step-by-step guide to your boat rental website

Most customers see your website before they see your boats. Often it’s on a phone, on a sunny morning, with friends waiting for an answer. Within a minute they want to know what you rent out, where you are and what it costs. Then they want to book.

This guide takes you through it step by step. New to boat rental? Then read how to start a boat rental company first.

Build it yourself or have it built

A web designer saves you time and builds the site you have in mind. The bill grows with every wish, though. So agree on a fixed price and a list of pages before they start.

Building it yourself costs time and little money. Squarespace and Wix are the quickest to learn. You pick a template and fill it in. WordPress gives you more freedom, and it asks more of you in updates and hosting.

Whichever you pick, the Let’s Book booking form fits in. There’s a WordPress plugin, and a short piece of code for Wix and Squarespace.

The pages your customers look for

Customers come with the same questions. Give each answer a place they find without searching:

• Your boats, each with a photo, the number of people and whether a license is needed.
• Your prices per hour or per day, and what’s included.
• The deposit, and when the customer gets it back.
• Where to find you: the address of the dock, a map and where to park.
• What to bring, and what happens when the weather turns.
• Extras like a skipper, a picnic basket or drinks on board.
• Reviews from customers.
• How to reach you: phone, email and opening hours.

Every question your site answers is a call you don’t take on a busy Saturday. Not sure yet what to charge? Read about the pricing model for your boat rental, about asking for a deposit and about the add-ons that sell.

Photos that make people book

A customer decides in a few seconds whether your boat is their day out. So show the boat on the water, with people on board, on a sunny afternoon. A photo of an empty boat at the dock in the rain sells nothing.

A good phone takes photos that are sharp enough for your site. Shoot wide photos for the website and upright ones for Instagram. Would you like to use photos of your customers? Ask them first. Our social media tips have more ideas for pictures people share.

Get found on Google

Think about what your customers type into Google. That’s “boat rental” with the name of your town or lake, “electric boat rental” or “pontoon rental”. Use those words where they fit: in your page titles, your headings, your image file names and your meta descriptions. Write for people first. A page stuffed with keywords reads badly, and Google ranks it lower too.

Link your pages to each other, for example from a boat to its prices. That helps customers find their way, and it helps Google understand your site.

Add your business to Google Business Profile as well. Then you show up on the map when someone nearby searches for a boat. Put your opening hours, photos and a link to your booking page there, and answer the reviews.

Google now shows an AI summary above many search results, and offers a separate AI Mode. Google says you need no special tricks to appear there. Clear pages that answer real questions do the work. So write your prices and opening hours as plain text on your site, not only in a picture.

A booking button on every page

Give every visitor a button to book without scrolling, on a phone too. Pick a color for it that stands out from the rest of the page.

Once the customer starts booking, keep it short and ask only what you need. With Let’s Book, the booking form runs on your own website, so customers book without leaving your pages. It takes your logo, fonts and colors. You decide whether the phone number is required, optional or left out.

When Saturday at two is taken, the form offers other times and dates for the same boat. A link on a boat page can open the form with that boat already chosen. Tourists book in their own language. The form is reviewed in English, Dutch, German, French and Spanish. In Danish, Greek, Italian, Portuguese and Swedish it’s machine-translated.

Let them pay when they book

The customer pays in the booking form, through Stripe or Mollie, and the money goes to your own account. You choose whether a booking is paid in full right away, or with a down payment and the rest before the trip. A security deposit can go with the payment, and you return it from the booking after the trip.

You can also send the customer to a thank-you page on your own site after paying. Do you measure your ads in Google Analytics? Then skip that thank-you page, because it stops Google Analytics from recording the booking automatically. Read more about payments in Let’s Book.

Start small with ads, and measure

When your site is ready, Google Ads can show your ad above the results for the searches you pick. Start with a small daily budget. Choose a few searches from people who are close to booking, like “boat rental” with your town.

Then check which ads lead to bookings. The Let’s Book booking form reports to Google Analytics 4 and Google Tag Manager, so you can follow a visitor from the ad to the booking. Put more budget on the ads that bring in bookings, and stop the rest.