Bookly Integration Review — 2025-12-02
Progress review meeting on the Bookly/Square integration for [1]. Two critical issues surfaced: a payment capture failure in the Square integration and a significant scope misalignment around the booking flow UX.
Overview
Date: 2025-12-02
Attendees:
- Kimberly Gehrmann (external consultant, client-side PM)
- Melissa Cusumano (Asymmetric)
- Isahaque (Ishaq) Mahmud (Asymmetric, developer)
- Mark Hope (Asymmetric)
- Chris Ostergaard (Asymmetric)
- Katie Schueller (La Marie Beauty)
- Lisa Frommelt (La Marie Beauty)
- Roxana Lopez (La Marie Beauty)
Purpose: Review Bookly integration progress and align on next steps.
Key Decisions
- Ishaq's immediate focus is narrowed to three concrete fixes (see Action Items); he is explicitly not responsible for investigating the Bookly customization question.
- Kimberly will own the Bookly feasibility investigation before any scope commitments are made.
- No scope commitments were made on this call. Both parties agreed to hold further scope discussion until Kimberly completes her research and a Kimberly–Melissa 1-on-1 is held.
- Variant/custom-page build-out is deprioritized. The 81 custom service pages Rox had requested are not in focus; the team is concentrating on the core Bookly booking flow first.
- Next meeting rescheduled from Tuesday to Friday, December 12 at 3:30 PM.
Critical Issues
1. Square Payment Capture Failure
The custom PHP code Ishaq wrote to connect Bookly with Square is incomplete. A live test during the meeting confirmed:
- The integration successfully books appointments (date/time selection works).
- It does not capture credit card information — the payment form is absent from the checkout step.
This makes the feature non-functional for production use; bookings cannot be secured without payment capture.
"We need to make sure that there's the credit card in there." — Kimberly
2. Booking Flow Scope Misalignment
A significant disconnect exists between Lisa's expected UX and what Bookly's default modal flow delivers. The root cause is that the original Miro designs were mobile-only and never included explicit desktop wireframes, leaving the booking interaction model ambiguous.
Lisa's expected flow ("dopamine shopping"):
- Inspired by Glossier's add-to-bag experience.
- User browses services and clicks "Book Now" → service is added to a side drawer cart without requiring date/time selection immediately.
- User can continue adding multiple services, building a full cart.
- Price total is intentionally hidden during cart-building to reduce friction and encourage higher spend.
- Date, time, staff, and payment are collected only at checkout, after the cart is complete.
Current Bookly behavior:
- Clicking "Book Now" on any service immediately opens a modal requiring date and time selection before the user can proceed.
- This breaks the psychological shopping flow Lisa envisioned and was demonstrated to her as a working prototype.
Business rationale (Kimberly's framing):
"You are allowing someone to hit all of their dopamine receptors, load their cart up with things. What they see is the price is so much less than what is actually going to be spent. There is a real business value to designing the website in this way."
Open question: Whether Bookly supports this level of customization (deferred date selection, side-drawer cart) is unknown. Kimberly noted that Glossier runs on custom code — not WordPress or Bookly — and Bookly may simply enforce the modal pattern with no override available.
3. Header Newline Character Bug
A flickering newline/whitespace character appears in the live site header (lamariebeauty.co). It appears on page load and then disappears.
- Ishaq has attempted fixes via PHP and JavaScript (hiding it); neither resolved the root cause.
- Hypothesis: theme bug, possibly requiring theme reinstall.
- Kimberly explicitly requested a root-cause fix, not a JS hide workaround.
4. Services Page Regression (Staging)
The /services staging page currently shows raw Bookly output instead of the original styled service tiles. The live site tiles are correct and should be restored to staging. Lisa reacted strongly to the Bookly-default view — this must not be client-accessible.
Action Items
| Owner | Task | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Ishaq | Fix Square integration to capture credit card info at checkout | Core blocker for production |
| Ishaq | Restore original service tiles on /services staging page |
Revert to pre-Bookly tile layout |
| Ishaq | Debug and root-cause fix the header newline character bug | No JS workarounds; theme reinstall may be needed |
| Kimberly | Research Bookly documentation for custom booking flow feasibility | Assess whether deferred date selection / side-drawer cart is achievable |
| Kimberly | Schedule 1-on-1 with Melissa after research is complete | Discuss findings and define scope before next group meeting |
| Melissa | Send Kimberly the initial Loom video from project kickoff | Context for original booking flow expectations |
| All | Reschedule next meeting to Friday, Dec 12 at 3:30 PM | Moved from regular Tuesday slot |
Context & Background
- Kimberly joined this project mid-stream and has been working with Lisa for over a year in other capacities.
- This is not the first vendor relationship Lisa has had; design ambiguity and scope friction have been recurring themes.
- Melissa acknowledged the project has exceeded its original budget scope: "The cost of what she paid for the site… it was definitely not a $5,000 [job]."
- The Bookly integration has already run longer than originally anticipated.
- Rox (La Marie Beauty ops) adding/editing services independently is a known future concern but is explicitly out of scope for this phase.
Related
- [2]
- [3] (if created)
- [4] (if created)