01 — Context
A sauna business that outgrew its software.
Rooftop Saunas runs private sauna cabins across more than one London location. Every slot has its own price, every location has its own schedule — and their old booking software was costing them money.
They asked Boomdevs for custom booking software built around how they actually work, with one extra condition: it should be possible to sell it to other businesses one day. That platform became Find Your Calm, a UK wellness marketplace and booking platform.
I joined Boomdevs in May 2025 and took full ownership of the product as Product Manager, and I did all the UX/UI design myself. The team was four full-stack developers and one WordPress developer. We launched in August 2025, about three months later, and I still own the multi-year roadmap.
My involvement started a little earlier: before I joined, Boomdevs' CEO showed me the project while the team was stuck on it, and I helped solve it — which led to him hiring me.
02 — Problem
Replace the system without stopping the business.
The goal was one platform to run the business — bookings, pricing, customers, payments, notifications and analytics — that plugged straight into the existing WordPress website, so customers kept booking where they always had.
Every slot needed its own price and every location its own schedule, and the old software was costing them money. There was a long feature list, a three-month deadline, and no room for downtime: bookings had to keep flowing through the whole migration.
On top of that, the platform had to work for two customers at once — Rooftop Saunas today, and other businesses it might be sold to later. I owned how it became a platform: deciding what became shared platform capability and what stayed operator configuration, and setting the pricing model.
03 — Decisions & trade-offs
Four calls that shaped the platform.
Platform capability vs. configuration
- Problem
- The software had to run Rooftop Saunas from day one, and still be sellable to other businesses.
- Decision
- Decided what became shared platform capability and what stayed operator configuration — then migrated Rooftop Saunas across without interrupting their bookings.
- Trade-off
- Building features as shared platform capability took more work than building them for one operator, so some moved to later releases. Migrating Rooftop Saunas was harder too: their existing setup had to fit the new shared structure, while bookings kept flowing.
- Said no to
- Operator-specific custom requests. One-off features for a single operator would have broken the platform model.
Pricing indexed to operator success
- Problem
- The platform needed a way to make money from operators — and enough operators to be worth booking on.
- Decision
- Subscription tiers indexed to the revenue each operator manages, with a free listing tier beneath them.
- Trade-off
- Monetizing customer success rather than transaction count, and using free listings as an acquisition channel — building density ahead of revenue.
Recurring revenue over guest booking
- Problem
- The platform needed recurring revenue, not just one-off guest bookings.
- Decision
- Built memberships, packs and gift cards and prioritized them over guest booking — then moved the offer out of post-checkout and into the booking journey itself.
- Trade-off
- Accepted lower first-time conversion in exchange for subscription revenue and identity capture on every transaction.
Structured location data from day one
- Problem
- Verification, search relevance and personalization all depend on knowing exactly where each operator is.
- Decision
- Specified structured location data — ONS local authority codes and coordinates — at launch, as part of the operator onboarding journey.
- Trade-off
- More work for the developers before launch, building the location data structure properly up front. Extra onboarding steps for operators, who had to give structured location details rather than just an address. And some other features moved to later releases to make room for it.
- Worth it because
- Adding structured location data later, once many operators were live, would have meant cleaning up messy data across the whole platform. Doing it at launch kept verification, search and personalization working as the platform grew.
04 — Execution
Three months, weekly with the client.
Research and wireframing came first: every booking scenario was mapped before anything was designed, with wireframes in Miro and Figma. From there I designed the web app for customers booking a slot and for staff managing the day. We met the client every week and researched each sprint's requirements before starting it, so nothing had to be rebuilt late.
What shipped:
- Multi-location booking with per-slot pricing and per-location schedules.
- Square payments.
- A WordPress plugin that puts booking forms and calendars on the existing site.
- Coupons and membership points, push notifications and WhatsApp updates.
- Customer and staff management, campaign tools and a live analytics dashboard.
To hold the August launch, features that needed more work as shared platform capability moved to later releases. Before switching over, every booking path was tested and all data was moved from the old system — so bookings kept flowing.
After launch, I led customer journey optimization end to end. I rebuilt the booking flow from funnel drop-off, Microsoft Clarity and GA4 behavioural data, session feedback and support themes — cutting steps and optional inputs to lift completion — and defined the digital onboarding journey for new operators.
Booking flow · before and after
05 — Outcome
Live, growing — and confidential.
- 100% of manual booking work replaced.
- Launched on time in August 2025, with bookings flowing through the migration.
- More bookings, and the losses from the old software stopped.
- The platform became Find Your Calm, now live with 17 UK operators.
- Booking completion improved noticeably after the rebuild, and has held at the new level every month since.
- The attach rate for memberships, packs and gift cards climbed steadily once the offer moved into the booking journey.
Platform analytics are held under client confidentiality, so exact figures are reviewed with the client in working sessions rather than published here.
Client feedback on the project
“Boomdevs delivered exactly what we needed right on time. The new booking system has made our day-to-day smoother, and their team was easy to work with the whole way through.”
— Sam B, COO, Rooftop Saunas
06 — What I'd do differently
Measure earlier. Test with operators sooner.
Set up analytics tracking from day one. We rebuilt the booking flow using Clarity and GA4 data, but with tracking in place from the start I'd have had a clean baseline to measure every change against, instead of relying on before-and-after comparisons later.
Put the operator side in front of real operators earlier. Testing operator setup and onboarding with real operators sooner would have shown us sooner what should be shared platform capability and what should be operator configuration.