Your widget is where a visitor's interest turns into a booking. The sooner it appears, the more visitors reach the booking step — so it's worth a few minutes to check.
If your booking options take a moment to show up, or visitors see an empty space on the page before the widget appears, work through the checks below in order. The first one solves it in most cases.
1. Make sure you're using the latest embed code
This is the most common cause, and the quickest fix.
We've improved the embed code so that browsers load your widget as a high-priority element of the page. Widgets installed before this improvement are still using the older code, and browsers may put them at the back of the queue — behind images, fonts and tracking scripts — before loading them.
The code in your bookingkit account is already up to date. You just need to replace the older version that's on your website.
How to update it:
Go to Sell > Widgets in your bookingkit account.
Find the experience or list of experiences that's on your website and click Insert in website.
Copy the HTML code shown.
On your website, open the page where the widget is embedded and replace the old code with the new one. (Not sure where to paste it? See bookingkit integration in different editors.)
Save and publish the page, then repeat for every page with a widget.
Prefer to edit the existing code instead? The only difference is one addition to the <script> tag. Add fetchpriority="high" just before the closing >:
<script src="https://…/bkscript/…" async fetchpriority="high"></script>
Everything else — including your own widget ID — stays exactly as it is.
Working with an agency or web designer? Send them this article. It's a copy-and-paste change that takes a couple of minutes and requires no access to your bookingkit account.
2. Check where the widget sits on your page
A widget placed far down a long page will load later than one near the top, simply because the browser works through the page in order.
We recommend embedding the code in as prominent a position as possible, and adding a clearly labelled Book now button or menu tab so visitors never have to scroll to find it. Bear in mind that only one bookingkit experience can be integrated per HTML page.
3. Look at what else is loading on the page
The widget shares the page's bandwidth with everything else on it. Pages that are slow overall will also show the widget slowly. Common culprits:
Large, uncompressed images and background videos
Several tracking and marketing scripts (analytics, ads, heatmaps, chat tools)
Page-builder themes with many plugins active
Reducing image sizes and removing scripts you no longer use will speed up your whole page, the widget included.
4. Check your performance or caching plugin
Many optimisation plugins have a setting that delays or defers third-party JavaScript until the visitor interacts with the page. This can hold your booking widget back even when everything else is set up correctly.
If you use a caching or speed plugin, look for options along the lines of delay JavaScript execution, defer third-party scripts or lazy load scripts, and add the bookingkit script to the exclusion list.
5. Check your cookie banner settings
If your consent tool is configured to block scripts until a visitor accepts cookies, the widget will only load after they've made a choice. That's expected behaviour, but it's worth confirming your banner is set up the way you intend. See bookingkit and cookie settings for what bookingkit sets and what to consider as a vendor.
Still slow?
Send us a message in the chat and include:
The URL of the page where the widget is embedded
Which browser and device you tested on
Whether it's slow every time or only occasionally
We'll take a look and get back to you.