Before / After · Case Study
Psychic Readings by Doreen (Newport Beach) had a GoDaddy site-builder page with almost nothing on it — and a business that runs entirely on appointments. The rebuild is a Phase-1 booking platform: a multi-step /book flow (choose a reading → in-person / phone / Zoom → timezone-aware slots), Stripe Checkout deposits with a reserve-and-pay-later fallback, and webhook fulfillment that auto-creates the Zoom meeting and emails an .ics confirmation. Holds expire on a cron so an abandoned checkout can't squat on a slot, reminders go out hourly, and a password-gated admin includes a one-tap review-ask button.
“A psychic's calendar is her inventory. The site's job is to sell slots without ever selling the same one twice.”
Receipts — measured
The pixel diff
Left: everything the legacy site shipped — frozen in place. Right: an auto-scrolling tour of the rebuild, from hero to booking. No slider to fight with.
This is everything the legacy site had to offer above the fold. No pricing, no calendar, no booking — the funnel ended at a mailto.
Auto-scrolls through the modern site so you can see the booking surface, the package grid, the pricing table, and the calendar inline — without leaving this page.
The four beats
Scroll past the legacy frame. The four beats land in order. At the end, the modern site fades into the same window.
The GoDaddy page had nearly nothing on it — no services, no times, no way to book. Every reading was arranged by phone tag, every slot was unprotected against no-shows, and remote readings meant manually creating and sharing a meeting link.
The site's one conversion is a booked, deposit-backed slot. Everything in the build serves that: the multi-step flow narrows to a time fast, the deposit makes the booking real, and fulfillment (Zoom + .ics + reminders) happens without Doreen touching a dashboard.
Next.js 15 + Neon. Multi-step /book (service → mode → timezone-aware slots), Stripe Checkout deposits with reserve-and-pay-later, webhook fulfillment (payment state, Zoom S2S meeting create, .ics email), hold-expiry + hourly reminder crons, and a password-gated admin with a review-ask button. The constellation hero and aurora styling wrap it in a brand that fits the business.
The platform is live at balboa-psychic.vercel.app. Remaining before cutover: Doreen's real photos and pricing, and pointing balboapsychic.com — the legacy GoDaddy page still answers there today, which is exactly what the before-captures show.
The GoDaddy page had nearly nothing on it — no services, no times, no way to book. Every reading was arranged by phone tag, every slot was unprotected against no-shows, and remote readings meant manually creating and sharing a meeting link.
The site's one conversion is a booked, deposit-backed slot. Everything in the build serves that: the multi-step flow narrows to a time fast, the deposit makes the booking real, and fulfillment (Zoom + .ics + reminders) happens without Doreen touching a dashboard.
Next.js 15 + Neon. Multi-step /book (service → mode → timezone-aware slots), Stripe Checkout deposits with reserve-and-pay-later, webhook fulfillment (payment state, Zoom S2S meeting create, .ics email), hold-expiry + hourly reminder crons, and a password-gated admin with a review-ask button. The constellation hero and aurora styling wrap it in a brand that fits the business.
The platform is live at balboa-psychic.vercel.app. Remaining before cutover: Doreen's real photos and pricing, and pointing balboapsychic.com — the legacy GoDaddy page still answers there today, which is exactly what the before-captures show.
Architecture
What changed
Each claim ships with concrete evidence — env vars, table names, cadence chips. No marketing fluff.
Canvas-2D particle constellation with mouse parallax over a CSS aurora — an atmospheric, performance-cheap hero that reads 'mystic' without a single cliché stock image, and degrades gracefully under reduced-motion.
The /book flow takes a Stripe Checkout deposit to confirm a slot. Clients who won't pay online can reserve-and-pay-later — the slot holds for a bounded window instead of forever. Webhook fulfillment marks the booking paid, creates the Zoom meeting via S2S OAuth when the mode is remote, and emails an .ics the client's calendar understands.
Slot generation is luxon-based and timezone-aware (a phone reading booked from Chicago shows Chicago times), and the booking transaction guards against two clients landing on the same slot — the second writer loses cleanly, not silently.
An hourly reminder cron nudges upcoming appointments; the hold-expiry cron reclaims slots from abandoned checkouts every 10 minutes; and the password-gated admin includes a one-tap review-ask button for after a good reading — the retention loop for a reputation business.
The agent backbone keeps the brand earning after hours. The owner approves; the system runs.
The hold-expiry cron reclaims any slot whose checkout was abandoned past the 10-minute window, returning it to inventory automatically.
An hourly cron emails reminders for approaching readings — fewer no-shows without Doreen managing a calendar app.
The Stripe webhook marks the booking paid, creates the Zoom meeting for remote modes, and sends the .ics confirmation — zero manual steps between payment and a scheduled reading.
