How I created an ecosystem in which my products help each other grow. 150K users acquired.

Hi,

I'm Justin Albertynas, the founder of a travel tech startup called Ratepunk, which launched in March 2022.

Before I tell you what Ratepunk does, I want to take you through the entire journey of having Ratepunk and developing the products branded as Ratepunk.

I want you to see the choices I've made during my product development process. This is going to be in-depth. Let's go.

Creating the infrastructure for the dawn of a new travel booking industry era

March of 2022 Ratepunk's web-extension launch

The initial idea was to create a web extension that compares hotel prices since they vary significantly among all the different OTAs (booking platforms like bookingcom, Agoda, hotelscom, etc.).

Everything is going great; I'm gaining users, making revenue, and scaling. The extension is entirely custom-coded, so we enhance it and add innovative features to the industry throughout the year.

Having a custom-coded product helped me scale fast, efficiently, and without any major hiccups.

These ideas come from having the right professionals on your team - in this case. TRAVELERS.

One thing that connects us all at Ratepunk is travel, and having a team involved in the industry you are working on in their free time does help to identify gaps and inconsistencies in the market that we can then try to fix by working together on something like Ratepunk

more more more

But then I started thinking about how to save travelers even more money and time. The goal for Ratepunk is more than just to make a profitable product. It is to create real value for the customer and to do that, we need to introduce new improvements to the travel industry as a whole.

I like to call it - "updating the industry."

I start development on the Ratepunk app and Ratepunk hotel page.

Let's talk about the app first.

The app takes the extension idea to the next level. Instead of just comparing the prices in real-time so you can go and book on another website, you do it all right there in the app.

Your favorite OTAs are integrated into the app, so the interface is the same. It's a familiar face if you're booking through mobile not to confuse or turn away the potential customer.

When you decide on your hotel, the best price comparison is integrated into the checkout process, so when you press checkout, you're getting the best rates available.

To develop it fast and efficiently, I used tech I had already developed for the extension

We integrated our live price acquisition, country, and currency comparison (depending on your IP and currency, the price can change too, so we get you the best one) tech of the extension.

Without the extension, making the app and introducing it to the market would've been extremely difficult, a nightmare, to be honest. Because there is a ton of booking apps

Now, a new stage in the booking process I wish to implement Ratepunk in is - research stage, or "pre-booking."

So I look at where the extension leads the users, where we lose our "grasp" of them, which are the hotel pages of these OTAs that get compared.

The problem is, as a traveler, these hotel pages are never enough for me to acquire all the information I would like when booking a hotel/apartment for a holiday to a city I've never visited.

The pages are ugly, clunky, and outdated (surprising since this is a multi-billion-dollar industry).

Looking at our competition from a consumer's perspective helps with this. But you should only do this if you have a supporting product, like Ratepunk's extension, to go along with it since you need to generate users and build credibility and identity before launching a product that goes up against the industry giants.

So, we started creating our own hotel pages with a big focus on design, many features, and information that would satisfy even the most demanding travelers.

Have a look for yourselves.

The advantage of these pages is not only visual; the best part of having something on your pages that the competition doesn't is SEO.

Cause if you google "X hotel name wifi speed," we're ahead of the competition without any Google search ads. Meanwhile, the competition is spending millions, but we get ranked above.

That's the genius of Ratepunk's hotel page - just seeing this seemingly "little hole" in the competition and expanding on it.

So this is the present. Ratepunk covers these steps of a traveler's journey to book a hotel

• PRE-BOOKING
  The pre-booking stage is researching the destination, so that's where the hotel page comes in.

• BOOKING
  If you're already set on booking the destination - the extension provides the best price, or you can book through the app. Also supports the hotel page, leading to it when it is the cheapest option.

And in the future, Ratepunk also wants to take care of..

• AFTER-BOOKING

Ratepunk checkout.

• Checkouts are a pain for us travelers; we have to re-enter all of our information repeatedly.

• Ratepunk checkout saves you from this by filling out the blanks for the hotels themselves.

• It would ideally remember what info you entered earlier, reacting accordingly whether you're traveling alone, with another adult or kid, and so on.

This would provide a profile for the user, help us match the best hotels with their preferences, and recommend the best-matched ones. It ties and improves the hotel page, the extension, and everything together.

TL;DR some of the lessons I learned while building this beautiful ecosystem of travel products.

• Developing one product carefully one after another, not rushing into something without having some solid ground to stand on
• Looking for clues on what's lacking in the competition
• Having a team that is passionate about the industry, therefore, notices the holes in it/think from your user perspective and be a user yourself :)
• Having a say in every step of a user's journey, which in turn enforces brand identity, causes one product to be consistent and valuable = all products have the potential to be the same (the customer's train of thought).

If you have trouble tying your products and ideas for the same industry together, please contact me via LinkedIn or comment here! I'll be sure to respond with my insights on the matter.