How Product Discovery Helped Our Client Save Almost $40,000 and Make a Travel App MVP. Journey Verse Case

The client’s idea

First, the client wanted to make a social network for travelers or unite ticket and accommodation booking services in a single app. But it’s not a unique idea as there are many services like this, so they had to reject this concept.

Then, they focused on another idea and assumed that it was hard for many people to plan their trips. For them, it’s a true headache to select sights and plan routes for each vacation day. They go through dozens of websites and YouTube videos like the Top 10 Places to See in N. All in all, they don’t have the slightest idea why a person should go there anyway.

The client’s product would help such travelers plan their trips more efficiently: they would lose less time and energy, and with the recommendation system, they would quickly find interesting places to visit. Also, in this app, users can keep travel diaries, where they keep notes, photos, and videos to return to the pleasant memories of the trip anytime they want. Or they can share these moments with the close ones. This was how the Journey Verse concept was born.

The convenience and speed of trip planning make this app valuable for users.
The app provides all the routes, locations, excursions, and advice from the locals. All of this will save the users’ time when they search and plan. Also, this service will make a trip unique.

This actually sounds cool. When a person gets ready for a trip, they often can’t find time to plan: they need to deal with the papers, pack things, and talk their friends into keeping the cat for a while 🐱. As a result, they have to invent routes for their long walks on the spot and waste precious time on their long-awaited vacation. It would be wonderful to have a special app to take care of the planning.

However, the market is full of travel services that allow users to buy tickets, book accommodation, as well as provide route recommendations with lists of the top sights and places to visit. That’s why any new app must be based on a strong hypothesis and cover the needs of the target audience as no other service does.

The client wanted us to make an MVP design, but they weren’t sure if the audience actually needed this product. We deeply understand these doubts: a startup can pour all its money into a project with no chance of succeeding. It’s always a huge risk. That’s why we always advise our clients to test the idea and use Product Discovery to determine the needs of the target audience before development starts.

Product Discovery helps clear doubts or prove them right. It’s always better to spend $3,000 on market research than go blind and lose $42,000 on developing a product that no one needs.

A client will get valuable insights even if the research proves that the project will fail. They can use these insights to implement new features, improve their marketing campaigns, or develop another idea they didn’t think about before.

We had to check if travelers actually needed an app specifically for planning and if they were willing to pay for it.

How we used the Jobs to be Done (JTBD) framework to identify the needs of the audience

We use the JTBD method for Product Discovery. It is based on the idea that people ‘hire’ products to fulfill specific tasks. People want products to efficiently deal with their pain points and needs in various circumstances. At the same time, they are not that interested in the core features of the app.

For example, people don’t actually buy wireless headphones. Instead, they buy an opportunity to listen to lectures and podcasts during their morning jogging routine. This way, they can devote more time to self-education.

Jobs to be Done helps us learn people’s inner needs and understand what makes them decide whether they should buy something or not. Also, we find out what people don’t like about the existing solutions.

In the JTBD format, we indicated the target audience’s pains and needs, as well as the existing solutions and what people don’t like about them.

Pains	Needs	How do people deal with them now?	What is wrong?
I spend too much time searching for a cool route and often come across some messy information.	Need to get ready for a trip beforehand to feel more confident	Watch videos and go through multiple websites to search for hotels, tickets, and locations	Planning takes too much time.
Standard routes are not exciting, but tour operators don’t offer anything else.	Need to have new experiences and decompress	Turn to tour operators	The tour operators offer mediocre services, dull standard excursions, and no personalized services.
There is no single solution for sharing information about trips.	Need to share my journey with my close ones and get their approval	Post photos on social media	There’s no single solution.
I can’t save routes, photos, and travel notes.	Need to keep track of emotions and impressions while traveling	Store notes in apps, keep diaries, or save photos	People have to tell their friends and close ones about a journey again and again.

We decided on the segment that might be interested in the future product:

It’s for travelers who want to plan their trips efficiently and in as little time as possible.

We identified three hypotheses to test during qualitative and quantitative research.

For us, it was important to understand how people with different approaches to traveling plan their trips: we searched for both travel geeks and those who haven’t been anywhere for a long time.

Such a sample group helps understand the market and audience segments better and get as many unique insights as possible.

How we conducted qualitative research in an in-depth interview format

We had 15 interviews with respondents. These are what we asked:

• • When do they start planning a trip?
  • How do they search for specific places to visit?
  • Where do they note the route details?
  • What do they generally expect from the trip plan?
  • Why do they plan?
  • What problems do they face?

Finally, the interviews took 13 hours! It takes faster to get from Tokyo to Istanbul 🙂

After talking to the respondents, we got two key insights for travel planning:

Insight 1. People plan beforehand because they are afraid to waste their precious vacation time.

With a pre-planned route, they are sure they won’t miss a thing. Besides, planning helps deal with uncertainty and anxiety.

However, there is always a place for exceptions. One respondent confessed that he starts the planning stuff a week before their vacation and “gets stuck online with their ass on fire” 😅

Insight 2. When people plan, they get enthusiastic about their trips. But if planning takes too long, they become apathetic.

Planning is associated with anticipation of the upcoming vacation and making new impressions. But if it takes too long, people feel exhaustion and confusion instead of joy. Excessive information from different resources doesn’t let them focus on the main things. People don’t understand what sources they can trust. Because of all these things, people just want to… stop planning.

We asked respondents how they planned. Some people open a few Google tabs and switch between them. The others just pin certain locations on the map. Travelers read reviews or dive into the local Telegram channels to search for unique locations there.

In most cases, they use free solutions for planning, such as website selections, blogs, or search engines. Also, they mentioned a few paid alternatives, such as tour operators, virtual guides, and city quests.

The qualitative research proved that planning is an important stage for many travelers. People plan to reduce anxiety, feel more confident, and get as many impressions as possible.

But thorough planning takes a lot of time, and travelers get tired of it at some point. The task doesn’t get any easier with an abundance of information online.

Journey Verse could recommend selections with tried locations and offer ways to optimize routes (for example, the app will show interesting locations nearby). This would resolve the issues with excessive information and a long search.

Does this mean that the app idea rocks? Yes, it does, but we needed a larger sample group to check our insights. That’s why we started quantitative research.

Validated insights from CustDevs in our qualitative research

To fulfill this task, we questioned over 100 respondents. This is what we found out.

Most of the respondents admitted they had some trouble with planning. People either spend too much time on it (42% of the respondents) or just don’t like doing it (33%).

However, the respondents plan their trips anyway, but often they change this plan and act according to the situation. 44.2% of respondents pointed this out.

In most cases, people search for route ideas online or use recommendations from their close ones. 77% and 72% of respondents respectively prefer these strategies.

We asked how much people were ready to pay for the service that would plan an entire trip based on personalized selections of tourist locations. 17% are ready to pay over $10, 14% are willing to spend $7, and 12% — up to $5. Some respondents emphasized that they are ready to pay for a product only if they can clearly see its value and advantages.

This result confirmed our interview findings: people have trouble with planning, they prefer free solutions but are ready to pay for a product if they see its value.

Thanks to the insights and quantitative research, we made a portrait of the audience segment interested in our product. It came as a surprise for us as we started the research since we didn’t expect anything from this part of the audience!

It turned out that it is mostly women who plan trips. So, it’s safe to say that Journey Verse is a service for female travelers. 👩

Additional insight: we understood that Journey Verse has one more benefit — it will reduce the cognitive load on the people who are responsible for planning a route.

We calculated the number of people we could attract from advertising channels. About 180k potential users could come from a single source. And competition for the segment would be high — it used mostly free solutions. On the other hand, quantitative research has shown that people were willing to pay for such products.

One last thing to be done was to calculate the unit economy and find out what cost would pay off the development.

How we calculated unit economy

We modeled different unit economies of the project to determine the most realistic one that would pay off the development and marketing in three years. The unit economy shows the riskiest product metrics and helps analyze promotion spending.

By the way, recently, our system analyst explained why a business must calculate unit economy and conduct CustDev interviews.

We determined 4 possible monetization models for Journey Verse. We calculated a probable average check that would pay off the investments and lead costs. Also, we indicated the advantages and possible risks for every option.

Unit economy model	Cost for a user	Advantages	Risks
One-time access payment	$30	It can pay for attracting leads.	The average check is too high. The app must be utterly beneficial for customers + the marketing spending will be enormous.
Payments per journey (+yearly subscriptions)	$3,000 or $15 (the app will pay off in 3.5 years)	User cohorts appear — don’t need to spend money to attract, but they bring money.	The app must retain customers as long as possible. People travel rarely, so the cohorts will only come from time to time.
Payments for selections of cool locations	$7 and at least two purchases per customer	The low price makes conversion to purchase easier.	The client will have to spend their resources and make those selections.
Partnerships that would generate leads	$0	It ensures a high level of conversion to purchase — we get profit from partners, and customers don’t pay at all.	The client will have to look for partners.

All the options get along with the product more or less. That’s why the client can test various scenarios. But note: in these economy models, we expect a high average check combined with high conversion rates. According to our calculations, it’s the only way to pay for all the investments in three years. However, there is a risk that the high price will scare customers away. If people don’t want to pay, the entire economy will collapse.

We see a solution in the partnership. Users won’t have to pay to access Journey Verse at all, but the development and marketing will pay off in three years.

Here, the economy is based on the fees from the partners, such as tour operators, organizations, and advertisers. Let us explain how it works.

Assume that a user opens the app to view attractions in the historical center of the city. They want to stay somewhere close to this place to be able to walk to all the locations. Then, they get a notification that there is a small cozy hotel nearby — it’s a 10-minute walk from the center and close to a few sights.

The user goes to the website of the hotel they saw in the app and books an accommodation. The hotel is our client’s partner. And a user has just carried out the target action. A partner gets $4 per action — it’s their net profit. Then, they pay a 30% fee to Journey Verse (it’s about $1.2) because the user carried this action through this app.

Partners benefit from such a model — they get bonuses from the target action and acquire a new advertising channel with a warm audience. At the same time, Journey Verse gets high conversion rates because a free product attracts users.

We calculated that this model will pay off in three years if the app has 4 constant partners and three target actions (booking accommodations, renting cars, and buying plane tickets) per user.

Our conclusion

With qualitative and quantitative research, we found quite a significant segment that would make the entire product economy run. These are young women who regularly travel and want to plan everything beforehand to get as many impressions from their vacation as possible and avoid anxiety. Although we found this segment, our research didn’t test if this product suits the segment.

When we calculated the unit economy, we found that all the models required a high average check. That’s why the client will have to work hard to explain the product’s value to their customers; note that they will have to compete with free solutions.

However, there is the partnership option that ensures high conversion because users don’t buy anything. This monetization option is beneficial for both partners and Journey Verse. It will help to pay off development and marketing in three years.

Ok, the client got their insights: people need this product, and it will bring profit. What’s next? They have two options.

They can go deeper into additional research to get a clear idea of the product the segment needs. Or they can develop an MVP to release the idea the client believes in. This way they can test if the segment would use the product.

Result: the client wants to develop an MVP

We helped our client find out the actual needs of their audience and discover a significant segment of prospective users the client was not aware of. The most important thing for us is that the client started believing in their product and wants to develop an MVP.

We suggested these features would be enough to test the MVP:

These features are enough to check the hypothesis and understand the future of the app once actual users start using it.

By the way, about half of the respondents from the quantitative research wanted to take part in beta testing of the product. So, now the client has their first customer base.

The pre-made selections of tourist attractions are one of the key features of Journey Verse. But come on! Does an MVP launch require uploading tons of content about popular tourist destinations? In this case, the development stage may continue for too long…

We decided to test the MVP on a subsegment of the segment. This sounds weird, but the process is actually simple and elegant: to save time on content generation, we will launch the project for the (female) travelers heading to one city. This way, it’s easier to test the hypothesis. Then, we will scale the project.

If everything is OK, the market will get a superb app for travelers!

Here is our client’s feedback:

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