I worked in the same co-working space as SA back in New York about 2 years ago and I can say without a doubt that the team behind SA hustled their asses off day in and day out. SA was the only crew in that space that seemed to work as much or more than I did, even going so far as to opening a cafe (https://www.adventurecafe.nyc) in the tiny little pop-up space in Lower East Side that businesses were failing in left and right. Kyle's post here is great, but it doesn't quite touch on the fact that this team was crushing it all week long to make it happen. Incredibly nice people as well.
Hey Jason! Great to hear from you man. You were always hustling your butt off as well! Haha. I always remember seeing you there around the clock, as we do!
I really appreciate the kind words and thanks for the Adventure Cafe shout out. It means a lot!
> So while I was working on the site, which at the time had no traffic, I went out to every single OTA (online travel agency) and third-party reseller site and said, "Look how many tickets we're selling through just one channel! You should get in on this!" And I just set up as many channels as I could find to fund the next stage. It's very common for tour operators to have either no tech or bad tech, so it wasn't that weird to these channels.
I really like this! Lots of people I talk to think: I will put this on the internet and people will find me. Hustling to get to your crowd is a great way to make sure you get consistent traffic. Kudos on this
I was curious what the 125,000/mo referred to: it's their gross sales on trip bookings, not their actual final cut. The author doesn't delve into margins (that said, not trying to downplay the accomplishment in any way).
I don't know his sector, but in mine, for a maximally automated service, that would be very high, and leaves exposure to undercutting from similar new entrants.
This hasn't hurt us in any significant way, at least yet.
Google also gives a lot of credit to how a business is reviewed in travel and because we have hundreds of 5-star reviews between TripAdvisor, Yelp and Google+ and many more internal reviews on our site we've only seen our rankings rise recently. We focus on having the best reviewed product in each of our categories and it seems Google has rewarded us for that.
It's something we're definitely on the look out for though, absolutely
Yes! It was indeed rolled into LivingSocial as an effort to differentiate from Groupon at the time in the height of the daily deals craze. We were essentially an in-house tour operator / adventure travel company for LS.
I came on board shortly after the Urban Escapes acquisition as part of the team that was scaling the UE model for LS in NYC.
Urban Escapes was rebranded as "LivingSocial Adventures"
I was there from 2012-2015. If I remember correctly, they were rolled into the Adventures platform which was later shut down as mentioned in the article.
Only tangentially related, but is there an OTA that doesn't go for the hard sell? E.g. popups galore, notications, spammy email? If so, I will spend every dollar of my future travel expenditure with that company.
We: https://www.muchbetteradventures.com try our best to keep the popups to a minimum (just a hellobar up top..) but then perhaps we're doing things wrong?
Awful is subjective. I get your point here (I personally wouldn't enjoy using that website either), but websites like this one are optimized to convert the greatest portion of the target demographic. It's very simple statistics. You can't please (or convert) all users, but you can convert enough of them to be a (highly!) profitable business.
HN users are usually a very poor demographic to optimize for. It's a small demographic, for starters, and it's a very sensitive one (as evidenced by your comment). On the other hand my girlfriend, parents and probably all friends not working in tech wouldn't even notice it (where notice means "perceptibly annoying enough to have an explicit thought about it").
A lot of people honestly just don't care if the website is bloated or has numerous prompts to subscribe or chat. The users of this site evidently put up with it because it provides them with enough utility that they're not going to nitpick. The creators of the site have likely researched the market and business model enough to know that this is close to the ideal for maximizing profit without sacrificing utility. The website has hit market equilibrium.
The website's profitability doesn't assure that it isn't awful, no (pure capitalism is not a moral framework). But the consensus of a lot of people who choose to use it sort of does mean it isn't awful, if you're trying to ascribe some sort of objectivity to that adjective (and I don't agree you can).
This is like bikeshedding the definitions of privacy, DRM, net neutrality, etc. Most people just don't give a shit, no matter how loud the minority is that demonizes things like throwing a newsletter subscription popup on a website.
A website serves a purpose, to create income. If removing some of the modals would reduce their income, then having them is subjectively better than not.
I think you need a new word to describe your (valid, in a way) opinion.
> Most people would care if they knew the difference,
Would they?
> they do not. It is up to those who know to tell them, to make a stance and denounce the shit.
Counterpoint: How do you differentiate people who have made a choice through inadvertent ignorance vs those who have made a different choice than you because they value different things?
E.g. not caring if they harm their hearing, liking the frequency response of Bose over more neutral speakers, having other things they'd rather be doing than read audiophile forums, or rather save $500+ and use an inferior speaker
Usually people regret this later in life. I guess we fundamentally disagree on the ability of people to make good decisions that they won't regret later and whether or not we should help people avoid doing things they will surely regret.
> or rather save $500+ and use an inferior speaker
This is hyperbole, I'm talking about the difference between a $3 set of earbuds and $20. I'm not saying everyone should have the highest quality gear available.
There's a difference between believing that only copper from a specific mine in Poland is a must have for your audio quality, and not using speakers damaging to your hearing.
i assure you that audio quality is clearly determinable.. even at the most basic form. Listening to an analog vinyl vs a digital CD is night and day.. the flat tinny sound of digital audio is shite.
>That website makes someone a whole bunch of money
$125k/month in gross booked travel may not be a whole bunch of money. Typically, only portions of the travel have commissions, and not huge percentages either.
Designer of SA here. Kyle and I have talked a LOT about this and have gone back and forth on it. I'll say while we're not personally fans of the widgets/popups, they're there for a reason. A couple things here:
- Say what you will about performance and UX, the fact is that it has (dramatically) increased conversions and bookings.
- If we were optimizing for HN, the site would look and perform much differently. The target audience - as others have mentioned - aren't repulsed by the popups.
Go read through Kyle's interview on IH - a lot of what he does with SA is grounded in quick iteration and "moving fast." I can't tell you how how many different techniques/widgets/plugins/etc we've implemented (and subsequently canned) over the past few years.
> Say what you will about performance and UX, the fact is that it has (dramatically) increased conversions and bookings.
This is what really irks me about the design industry of late. It's become an overly self-critical echo chamber of people pushing this idea of what user experience "should be", yet totally miss the critical business decisioning behind it and ignore the fact that it drives conversions.
Totally agree. I read an article the other week where a UX/UI person redesigned booking.com's front page as a case study, and while it looked nice I bet it would have made the company far less money. Of course everyone would love to have their website look like Airbnb's, but most don't have the luxury of being propped up by VC money. I think a lot of designers undervalue the importance of SEO as well.
You're missing something really fundamental here -
You are visiting this site with a dispassionate eye of an observer. The usual demographic visiting a travel site is a lot more invested in actually finding a travel deal that works for them.
Let's take an extreme example - say you were thirsty for water right now. Would you take a "cold enough" bottle of water or would you wait for the perfectly ice-cold bottle of flavored water with brain boosting ions? The average visitor who goes to a website to transact is like the thirsty you. They are willing to overlook the "cold enough-ness" of the water as it were because they need their thirst sated.
We aren't special because we are users of Hacker News. We are special because we are seeing the website from the vantage point of a bystander.
Most users do not care and do not agree with you that it is bad, as evidenced by the continuing dominance of these practices.
What you have here is a crusade based upon your personal feelings, not the objective utility of the website. And the result is that we now have a discussion going centered around common marketing strategies instead of the website itself and its service.
As a counterpoint, I don't particularly find this website egregious. If you feel strongly about things like this, don't use those websites, or build your own alternative (though a lack of popups will not be a competitive advantage).
Note that I'm not saying this to insult you. I'm saying this because your comment comes across to me as myopic and lacking in self-awareness. You're not the target demographic if these things put you off, but that doesn't mean it's productive for you to call them "bad." HN users frequently wonder how people build profitable advertising, product or consulting-driven profitable businesses, and the answer is (in part) that those people were okay with doing things that others find disagreeble. That's an inevitability when you have outspoken groups like e.g. those who believe all software should be free and open source.
Slimy, dirty tricks, tasteless popups and dark patterns work. Nobody denies that. Some of the most successful, profitable small-time web sites out there are successful by doing it in ways that would make me ashamed and disgusted with myself. I once did a little research into the lead-gen and affiliate linking businesses, and felt like I needed to take a shower when I was done. But they're successful at generating money, so who am I to criticize? Hell, SPAM still works, evidently!
I totally agree! If that's the case, there is a wonderful market opportunity here. People shouldn't be made to grudgingly put up with options they don't like - that's entirely why we have competition.
Maybe we'd find that the market is inefficient, which is why this website thrives despite its user interface (if we take as axiomatic that the user interface is really unenjoyable for most users). However, I'd happily bet that this is actually not the case, and that most users not only put up with it, they don't notice it.
I'll note (as a purely dialectic matter) that I do not agree with the idea that people can simultaneously dislike something and not be willing to spend money to enjoy it more, given that there are more enjoyable alternatives of the same utility and the users can afford it.
Kyle here! Founder of SA. These are all good points. As Damian mentioned we test all of these tools and they all do significantly increase conversions on our site.
It's something we've discussed internally quite a bit. I wish it were as simple as, hey we have this great product and that's all we need to have, but alas these tools are necessary to help us grow the business.
Another important thing to consider -- You have to look at our site through the lens of the travel industry. Deciding you're going to book an all day excursion or 5-day vacation is a big commitment and people have a lot of questions. They tend to revisit the site again and again before converting because there is a lot to consider. That's why we have pre-triggered chats, which BTW only trigger if you meet certain parameters. For example, if you spend more than a certain amount of time on a product page, visit specific pages where we see a lot of drop-off, or on your 2nd or 3rd session. We don't bug people at random, we bug them in a very carefully and meticulously measured way :) If we were a SaaS business for example we would optimize differently. I might even go as far as to say some (maybe not all) of what appears to be annoying to an outsider can help assist the end user.
All of that being said, I totally understand where everyone is coming from here and to be honest I don't think there is a single comment here that I disagree with. Ultimately, we have to test things and keep what works. If it doesn't work we always get rid of it, eventually.
I find articles like "how we built our startup" on HN to be hugely valuable. The fact that the founders of said startup participate in the discussion makes it doubly so. But every such post is marred by variants of "your website sucks" trolls. Eventually that kind of thing will make HN poorer by driving away the creators. It's fun to be a critic, but I also know what it's like to have a job and a family to feed.
Maybe what's good for business isn't always good for the user, and the only reason anyone thinks capitalism works this way is that it makes some people rich. :)
