I typically use travel sites to search for hotels and read reviews, then just book directly with the hotel, which has never cost me more, and often less because some sites (i.e. booking) obfuscate the relationship between price and amenities/size so you don't get what you actually could get for the money if you just went to the hotel directly.

Life's too short to do direct hotel bookings. The sites are slow and terrible to navigate even when they're not straight-up broken. They never bother to tell you their cancellation policy, filling in your information is a drag and you don't get a proper calendar entry unless you make one manually.

Maybe I just know how to pick good hotels? Every single point you just mentioned has not applied to the way I typically do it, the cancellation policy is always the first thing I look for and make sure it’s clearly spelled out. I’ve never had any problems actually interacting with the sites either.

I'd be interested to know what your process is if you've got a way to reliably pick out boutique hotels whose websites don't suck without taking too long over it. E.g. I'm going to Munich in August - want to talk me through what you'd do?