About the Business
Customer Segments
In order to better cater to the unique needs of Vietnamese travelers, we divided this group into three distinct segments based on their traveling purposes:
- Business travelers: those who typically travel to meet with clients and partners. Due to the nature of their travel needs, this group requires a very specific set of features and support from a travel booking platform.
- Tourists: those who travel for leisure and to enjoy various destinations. They may have different preferences when it comes to accommodations, activities, and other travel-related services.
- Home-traveller: these people travel to get back home (or from home).
Value proposition
Goyolo defines itself as an OTA for any Vietnamese travelers. The unique value we provide to the users are:
- Goyolo’s mission is to be the go-to online travel agency (OTA) for all Vietnamese travelers. Our platform offers a one-stop shop for all travel needs, including flight, bus, and train tickets. With our existing expertise in bus ticketing, we have the most comprehensive platform for travel booking in Vietnam.
- In addition to our comprehensive range of services, we have a tailored search tool that specifically caters to the needs of local users, providing a level of personalization that international apps cannot offer.
- Furthermore, we are committed to making impossible routes possible by seamlessly connecting different modes of transportation. For instance, if a traveler needs to go from A to C and there is no direct flight, our advanced algorithm can suggest a route that involves a flight from A to B and a bus ride from B to C, making the journey smoother and more efficient.
Key partners/stakeholders
In order to create a seamless travel booking experience for our users, Goyolo has formed key partnerships with various industry partners:
- We have established partnerships with a leading flight ticket agency in Vietnam, which has already integrated with all flight brands, making it a simple and time-saving solution for our minimum viable product (MVP).
- We have partnered with Vietnam Railways Corporation, providing users with the convenience of booking train tickets directly through our platform.
- We hired an outsourcing designing company that helped us with the product logo and a set of icons.
- To ensure we provide the most comprehensive bus ticket offerings, Goyolo has formed an internal partnership with VeXeRe.com, with Goyolo calling the API from VeXeRe’s database to get the bus ticket information.
Moreover, we have an internal Marketing team, Finance team, Account Manager team, and other departments who work collaboratively to provide the best travel booking experience for our users.
Revenue streams
At Goyolo, we earn revenue through ticket commissions and surcharges on each ticket purchased through our platform. This business model has allowed us to offer our services free of charge to our users while still maintaining a profitable enterprise.
Furthermore, as a product of VeXeRe.com, Goyolo contributes to the overall value of the company’s suite of products, providing VeXeRe.com with a more comprehensive travel booking offering. By leveraging the synergies between our products, we are able to provide a wider range of travel-related services to our users.
My role as a Product Owner
At Goyolo, I was fortunate to have had the opportunity to work with multiple clients and product teams. Some of my key responsibilities included:
- Facilitating the Scrum team
- Facilitating the Scrum team and leading a team of six developers, two testers, one designer, and one other product owner. This experience also included managing and developing another product owner with tasks such as backlog grooming, sprint management, and documentation.
- Conducting extensive competitor research analysis to learn about the industry norms and their feature set, which helped build the MVP version without missing out on essential features. These features were categorized into point of parity (POP) and point of difference (POD), enabling us to prioritize them while deciding which features to implement first.
- In collaboration with designers, I prepared Product Requirement Documents for new features/tasks and validated them with customers to ensure the most user-friendly design.
- In collaboration with the Marketing team, I did the research on SEO keywords, reviewed the articles, injected keywords into the copy writing, implemented other SEO tactics to bring our site to the first pages of Google Search engine result page.
- I also hosted all Scrum ceremonies and Grooming sessions.
- I supported the Scrum team by testing newly released tickets on testing environments and planned the product roadmap with the CEO. I created a prioritization framework using the WSJF (Weighted Shortest Job First) to help prioritize the most important features.
- Working with the users & partners
- I conducted in-depth interviews and usability testing with over 120 users across three segments to gain customer insights and learn their pain points using the Jobs-to-be-done theory.
- I worked with the flight ticket agency and Vietnam Railways Corporation to negotiate an integration plan as well as the commission rate while communicating with the bus ticket team within VeXeRe.com to provide Goyolo with the API for bus tickets.
- I also worked with a designing agency to finalize the logo and icons.
Thanks to the efforts of the entire team, we were able to launch the MVP version within just three months after the starting day, which yielded a monthly 130% traffic increase.
Key takeaways
Joining the Goyolo team from the very first day allowed me to learn many new things and gain valuable experience:
- Firstly, I learned all the steps required to set up and build an MVP product, from ideation to bringing it to life. I understood how important every decision we made in the early stages was because making a wrong decision regarding technical and product debts might lead to significant problems in the future.
- For an OTA platform, Google SEO is very important at first. With the support of my boss and the marketing team, I learned the skill to research SEO keywords and tactics to make the Goyolo website appear on top of the Google search result page, which was a crucial step in acquiring users organically.
- I had the opportunity to integrate with the Flight ticket database and gain a deeper understanding of the flight industry, as well as the OTA industry. This experience has been significant in my personal and professional growth, providing me with an excellent understanding of how the industry works.
- I learned all the steps to set up and build up an MVP product, from ideation to bringging it to live. Every decision we made at the early stage is very important because if it’s not made property, it’ll create a lot of technical and product debts later on.
- The most rewarding experience was being the first person to book a flight ticket on the platform that I helped to build. This feeling of satisfaction was unbeatable and motivated me to keep improving our product to give our users the best possible travel booking experience.
