Your booking page is often the first impression potential clients have of your business. A generic-looking form can make you seem unprofessional, while a branded experience builds trust and reinforces your identity throughout the entire booking process.
Booking presets let you control the background, colors, and headings on every step of online booking, so checkout feels like part of your website instead of a detour to somewhere else.
Creating a Booking Preset
How Presets Are Matched to Packages
Presets are matched to packages in order from top to bottom, and the first match wins. A package only ever uses one preset, so when two presets both claim it, the higher one is what clients see. Drag the handle on the left of any row to reorder the list.
Below the numbered list sits a preset labeled Default fallback for all other packages. It catches anything the presets above it did not claim. It has no Valid For settings and it cannot be deleted, so every package always has something to fall back on.
Valid For
Valid For is how you assign a preset. You can scope it to whole event categories, to individual services, or to specific package groups. The Presets list shows what each preset applies to underneath its name, which is the fastest way to check your work.
It lives on the Settings tab inside the visual editor, the pill with the cog icon at the end of the step row, alongside Preset Name. Settings has its own Save Settings button, separate from the per-step saves.
The Visual Editor
The editor puts a live preview of the step on the left and its controls on the right. Move between steps with the pills across the top or the arrows on either side of the preview.
- Each step saves on its own with the Save Step button.
- An Unsaved badge appears next to the step name as soon as you change something.
Every step except the Package Selector gives you the same set of controls:
- Background Type: Image, Solid, or Gradient.
- Background Image: Upload File from your computer, or pick something you already have in your Media Library.
- Background Color for a solid, or Gradient Start and Gradient End for a gradient.
- Font Color: White or Black.
- Header Text and Subheader Text: leave the header blank and the step keeps its default, which the placeholder shows you.
With no image uploaded, a step falls back to Check Cherry's stock artwork. That is what you are looking at in the preview before you change anything.
Package Selector
The first step has no styling controls, and the editor tells you so. Its appearance comes from your brand rather than the preset: the colors on Business Settings, plus the signup header, subheader, and call to action text under Booking Engine General. Change those and the first step changes for every preset at once.
The Booking Steps
Online booking runs through these steps, and the editor's pills follow the same order:
- Package Selector: clients browse and choose a package.
- User Info: contact details. If someone stops here, their info is still saved as a lead.
- Calendar: the event date.
- Add-Ons: additional services.
- Backdrop: backdrop selection.
- Staff Selector: the team member they want.
- Venue: venue name and address.
- Extra Questions: your own custom questions.
- Deposit: contract signature and payment.
If you have renamed your Add-Ons or Backdrops category, the pills and headings use your name for it, matching what clients see in the live flow.
Where Step Content Is Controlled
A preset controls how a step looks. What is on it comes from elsewhere, and the editor points you there with a tip above each preview. The ones people hunt for most:
- Staff Selector is only shown if staff selection is enabled for the service. Go to Packages, choose a service, and enable "Allow customer to choose from available staff during booking."
- Backdrop is only shown if backdrops are available. Enable them per package under Packages, and manage the collection under Backdrops.
- Extra Questions are added under Extra Questions.
- Service images, the pictures clients see when choosing between your offerings, live on the package group under Packages. A tall portrait image up to 1500px works best.
Duplicating and Deleting Presets
Duplicating is the fastest way to build a variant. Open the three-dots menu on any row and choose Duplicate.
Delete lives in the same menu. Any package groups assigned to the preset you delete are reassigned to another preset, so nothing is left without one.
What Most Businesses Do
Most businesses run a single preset that matches their website colors and let the default fallback cover everything. That keeps the experience consistent no matter which service someone is booking, and it means one place to make a change.
Separate presets earn their keep when your services have genuinely different personalities: understated for weddings, bright and playful for a photo booth. If you go that route, keep the specific presets above the fallback so they match first.