Hidden Haven
The Client
Hidden Haven Tiny Houses and Nordic Spa located just outside Swift Current operates in the hospitality sector providing accommodations to guests in the form of individual tiny houses, and offering relaxation and recreation through their Nordic Spa. Both the tiny houses and spa are located on the same property, but both are individually bookable.
Project Overview
In 2025, Hidden Haven owner Sara partnered with Landing Studio to upgrade the Hidden Haven website. A key goal of the project was set up a channel for direct bookings through the website. The solution provided needed to have an embeddable booking engine that could be added to the website, and needed to sync the bookings from other booking channels where the Hidden Haven Tiny Houses are listed. In short, Sarah wanted an integrated solution that allowed her to capture direct bookings while syncing her booking calendar with her other booking channels. Additionally, the new website needed to connect with the booking engine for the Nordic Spa.
Website Planning
Searching for a Booking Engine
The project began with looking for a booking solution. The Landing Studio conducted research on the options for accommodations direct booking solutions, specifically looking for those that had features like channel integration. Other assessment criteria included the ability to upsell. After extensive research we selected a property management system with a reasonable amount of features at an acceptable price point.
Website Design
The Hidden Haven website is built primariliy on client provided content laid out by the Landing Studio in a custom layout, and styled using a combination of Squarespace native options and custom code.
Content Availability
To build the Hidden Haven website we used client provided resources. The client was able to provide us with their logo, various photos to use, and we were able to reference and use existing write-ups for text content. There was some subtle variance in photo feel and framing which can make it a challenge to adapt into a cohesive feeling website; however, adding gradients and overlays, combined with layout, makes the website come together visually.
Visuals Enhanced by Custom Code
The Hidden Haven website was designed in the Squarespace CMS which makes web design more simple overall. It is fairly intuitive for new users who want to to maintain and update their website themselves. Users can use templates to guide their website layout or build from scratch, adding moveable blocks for text, images, videos etc.. While the platform is generally easy to use, and offers a wide variety of styling options in terms of color palettes, fonts, buttons, section dividers, image cropping, etc., there are limits to customizability through the platform’s tools.
While a high-level of website customization is possible even without knowing any coding, using Squarespace’s built in tools, the platform also allows web designers options to go beyond integrated customization by including the option to add custom CSS code that targets specific elements. The Hidden Haven website takes advantage of the ability to add custom CSS to enhance the Hidden Haven website’s style in a couple of ways.
Burger on Desktop
A typical Squarespace website has a navigation menu across the top of the page. For the Hidden Haven website, the Landing Studio decided to do a burger menu - basically the mobile menu was used for desktop view as well as mobile. This choice gives a very clean look to the website.Add a Custom Heading Font
The fonts available directly through Squarespace didn’t have quite the feel we wanted for the Hidden Haven website. Rather than settle, we found a font through Adobe Fonts to use on the website, importing it through the Squarespace code injection function, and then applying it using custom CSS.
Hidden Haven Mobile Homepage Design
Hidden Haven Desktop Homepage Design
Custom CSS enhances the design of the Hidden Haven website, allowing for a hidden (burger) navigation on desktop as well as mobile, and other design features like a custom heading font (used above for the “peace of the prairies” text).
Double Outlined Button
The Hidden Haven logo is circular with text and an icon on a black background. Near the edge of the black background there is a thin white line. The Landing Studio used this visual element across the website in the way buttons are styled. Squarespace allows for a single border outlining buttons, but to create a similar effect to the Hidden Haven logo where the white line is inset from the edge of the circle, we had to use custom CSS.
An example of the Hidden Haven button styling:
Website Functionality
As much as a website needs to look pretty, it usually also has a job to do. In addition to being a marketing tool that communicates information to potential guests, and promotes the Hidden Haven Tiny Houses and Spa, the Hidden Haven website also plays a part in the operational side of the business. First, the Hidden Haven website offers an additional booking channel for the Tiny Houses, and serves as the primary access point for the Nordic spa booking channel. These specialized functions are possible through third-party widgets. Additionally, we set up the Squarespace e-commerce function on the website for use as a gift certificate sales and distribution channel.
Widgets
The most complex widgets on the website are the booking engines. The accommodation booking engine and spa booking are integrated into the site and allow the user to stay on the Hidden Haven website rather than redirecting to an external site.
The accommodation booking engine, which is provided through the property managment service provider Sirvoy, is integrated into the website via a booking engine widget. This widget allows users to create a tiny house booking from the Hidden Haven website, which is then managed through the Sirvoy platform which specializes in booking managment. To make it this widget integrate with the design of the website, we customized the color scheme to match that of the main website.
Spa bookings are managed through a widget provided by Vagaro which provides scheduling software for spa establishments (and other industries). The accomodation and spa booking streams are managed separately on different specialized platforms due to the different needs of the two business streams - 2 hour slots for the spa compared to days/nights for the tiny houses.
Ecommerce
Finally, Sara wanted the option to sell gift certificates with a preference for automatic fulfillment via email. While we explored using the client’s existing tools to create this function, in the end we used the Squarespace ecommerce capabilities to make a workable process.
One challenge the Landing Studio faced with setting up a gift certificate product was that the product needed to be redeemable for either or both a Nordic Spa booking and/or a Tiny House stay. While we first explored using the built-in gift card options offered on the with the Nordic Spa platform, we found that the back end would get quite complex for redemption. Making product that would not be restricted to redemption on the Nordic Spa booking platform meant a trade off in automation; there would would not be automatic e-mail fulfillment upon purchase.
In the end, we set up the gift certificates as products on the client’s new Squarespace website, which allows for automatic emails of a gift certificate pdf after users make a purchase. Hidden Haven receives the payment through Squarespace, and books in guests for either a Nordic Spa session or tiny house stay manually.
Final Thoughts
Overall, working on the Hidden Haven website project was challenging but interesting; the project gave us the opportunity to explore specific accomodation services and tools that exist. We got to think about how these tools could impact operations positively or negatively, and also the user joureny. In reflection, this project emphasizes the idea that a website really can be a business tool and not just in a advertising, promotional sense.
In the end, we are proud of the design of the website and satisfied with its functionality. We hope and trust that it will serve both Hidden Haven and their guests well, becoming a foundation for business growth and development, and a tool that helps guests make bookings more easily and conveniently.