Zostel Wallet 👝— PRD

9 min readAug 3, 2021

Objective / Goal: 🥅

To simplify the Booking Experience for Zostel Travel Pass / Credit holders.

The Problem: 🙄

What?

Zostellers who have bought Travel Pass / Credits from the “Travel for Tomorrow” Campaign has to every-time write/mail requirements to the Reservations team to book any Zostel properties and this hampers my user experiences and here is why:

Why?

Here are a few User Verbatim to support Problems faced by users while booking flow:

As a User, I don’t know what to mention in my Email for booking stays.
As a User, I feel like I miss out on things like “Reserve by paying Partially” while booking stays normally vs booking through my Travel Pass.
As a User, I feel the fear of missing on stays since it takes 24–48 hours for the reservation team to come back with the Booking after Emailing.
As a User, I don’t know how many credits/passes are left in my account.
As a User, I don’t understand where and how my Travel credits were spent.
As a User, I have to check my Inbox multiple times for a receipt of confirmation Bookings from Reservations.
As a User, I have traverse around multiple times from Zostel Website to Email to write an Email for booking.

Success Metrics: 🤑

#KR1: Number of Reservations done by Zostellers using Travel Pass / Credits.

#KR2: Average Time taken to Confirm a Reservation.

#KR3: Ticket Size for Reservations Team.

Target Persona: 🥷🏼

Zostellers with Travel Pass / Credits holders:

Mostly Backpacks / Adventurous / wants Experiences / Travels often( at least once in 2 months).
18–35 from Tier 1 & 2 / Student / Working Professionals / Backpacker.
Digital Nomad and uses Social actively for Connections, Communication & Self-branding.

GTBDs: 🚀

As a User, I want to book Zostel properties through my Travel Passes / Credits easily.

JTBDs: 🙋🏻‍♂️

Solution Prioritisation: 🥳

Our Key Hypothesis: 👀

Zostel would charge the full amount to reserve any bookings that are made through Travel Pass / Credit. Reason: Since Zostel offers users with Pass / Credits Dorms / Rooms at the lowest prices, Zostel would want its users to confirm them by paying owners fully.
The user will not reserve both Dorms and Rooms at once while booking. Reason: Since most of our users are backpacker/hostellers and moreover most of the properties have a max limit of 4 for group bookings, Users would like to accommodate the complete group in one place and not distributed. Hence we feel users would either reserve Dorms or Rooms during booking. (We don’t have DATA available to make this informed decision)
We would not be considering WalkIn Use Cases with Travel Pass / Credits. ie., Wherein a Property Manager can reserve for users with Travel Pass / Credits, who directly showed up at the Property without prior booking. Reason: Most of the times users plan their travel. Since developing client-side software would take Large efforts for now and can be developed at a later stage when we have this as a major use case. Right Now, Users can book it using the Website directly.

Task Flow (Considering only V1): 🚀

Description:

A user who hasn’t logged in completes the Reservation process as it is.
A user who has logged in but has neither Pass nor Credits completes the Reservation process as it is.
A user who has logged in and also has Pass / Credits can complete the Reservations in the following ways:

CASE 1: Have Credits / Pass — which can partially fulfill my Reservation (low balance), Use Credits / Pass and rest using Money to Reserve.
CASE 2: Have Credits / Pass — which can be fully used for Reservations.
CASE 3: Just pay normally online and do their Reservation (Don’t use Credits / Pass)

Edge Cases we have considered: 💯

Travel Passes can be used only for reserving Dorms and Travel credits can be used for both reserving Dorms and Rooms. Both Travel Pass and Credits cannot be used for reserving LongStays.
Users while booking Dorms / Rooms and have Travel Passes / Credits have to reserve it using complete amount and not partial.
Travel Pass & Credits are not applicable from 25th December to Jan 2nd.

Wireframes: 📌

Case 1 — Reserving only Dorms:

Flow Diagram:

User selects the number of Dorms that they want to book and they log in.
Users can buy either Travel Credits or Travel Pass or can buy/own Both.
Upon reach the booking Summary Page and Now user gets multiple options to book Dorms either by paying online (juspay) or by using Travel Pass or Travel Credits.
If Users choose either Travel Pass / Credits, Booking Confirms for the User and Balance gets updated on Backend and same is shown it to the user on Frontend next time while Booking.
If the user has Credits / Passes ≥ Reservation Amount, Full Credits / Passes Debited from Wallet on User Interest. If the user has Credits / Passes < Reservation Amount, Partial Credits / Passes to be deducted from the wallet and rest to be done by users using Money (Online, Card).
Example — If there are two dorms that need to be booked and there is only one pass, One pass can be redeemed and the other can be reserved using juspay. Same with Credits.
Users cannot use both Pass and Credits at once while reserving a dorm. It’s either of one and if it’s partial rest will be paid using Online(Juspay)
If the user has both Credits & passes, We would show both accordingly so that the user can select any one of them accordingly. But if the user has either of one. We would show only one. Ps: We can even recommend users to choose based on Balance. (V2).

Reserving Dorms — The user owns both Credits and Pass but can choose either of them for Reserving Dorms.

Reserving Dorms — Users own Passes or Dorms to Reserve Dorms.

Ps: All Original Design Files here

Case 2 — Reserving only Rooms:

Flow Diagram:

User selects the number of Rooms that they want to book and they log in.
Users could have either Travel Credits or Travel Pass or can own Both.
Upon reaching the booking Summary Page and Now user gets multiple options to book Rooms either by paying online (juspay) or by using Travel Credits (Travel Pass not allowed).
If Users choose Travel Credits, Booking Confirms for the User and Balance gets updated on the Backend and the same is shown to the user on Frontend next time while Booking.
If the user has Credits ≥ Reservation Amount, Full Credits Debited from Wallet on User Interest. If the user has Credits < Reservation Amount, Partial Credits to be deducted from the wallet and rest to be done by users using Money (Online, Card).
The above image serves as an Example — If one room needs to be booked there is only 500 credits, 500credits can be redeemed and the rest amount can be reserved using Money Online (Juspay — Card, Online)
If the user has both Credits & passes, We would show both for reserving Rooms, but Pass in a Disable state, so that users will still know they own Pass and Balance.

Reserving Rooms — Users own both Pass & Credit but can reserve rooms only using Credits.

Ps: Even though Pass cannot be used to reserve rooms, but we still show it to our users so that they know their Balance and showcasing it’s safe with us!

Reserving Rooms — Users own either Pass or Credits.

Ps: All Original Design Files here

Miscellaneous: 📣

When a user clicks on the “i” button, the card expands and looks like this. This can be minimized in two ways. Either by having a specific timer or user clicks on the “i” button again and the information is Minimised.

2. Introducing Low Balance Alert for Users. While reserving, if The Passes ≤ 2 and Credits ≤ 500, We would trigger users to Buy More.

Ps: We don’t have data to come up with the right number to show Low Balanced Alert. Please validate with the Data once.

3. According to our Hypothesis, Both Rooms and Dorms cannot be reserved at once using Credits or Pass. Ps: Go back to the “Our Key Hypothesis” paragraph to read more on this.

If a user Login’s and tries to avail of the Pass or Credit. This alert would be shown.

Alert triggered to Users when they try to reserve both Room & Dorm at once using Credits or Pass.

4. User’s cannot avail Zostel Pass / Credits benefits on Particular Days. Eg: Dec 25th to Jan 2nd.

Alert triggered to Users since they cannot avail Pass / Credits on specific days.

5. Alert Priority: Since there are three alerts, We would need to prioritize alters for a better user experience.

CASE 1: LOW BALANCE is always optional and can only be shown when users have no alerts on their screen.

CASE 2: If a user tries to reserve Rooms and Dorms on 25th December with low credit, We can show only the 3rd Alert from the below reference Image — Since that’s of highest priority for that day, no matter what.

CASE 3: If a User tries to reserve both Rooms and Dorms together with Low Balance, We can show 2nd Alert from the below reference Image — Since that’s of the Highest Priority.

CASE 4: If a user tries to book on 25th Dec with Low Balance, We would show 3rd Alert from the below reference Image — Since that’s of highest priority for that day, no matter what.

6. Prompting Users to log in — for directly reserving Dorms or Rooms using their Zostel Travel Pass or Travel Credits while Reserving.

Prompting Users to log in — to directly reserve using Zostel Travel Credits or Travel Pass.

Ps: All Original Design Files here

Release Strategy: 💡

Pre-Launch Phase

Identify a date of launch giving sufficient time for planning and product/launch readiness. This will require working with different teams, including product, engineering, sales, marketing, and support.
Close Testing, Identify a handful of beta users and gather initial data on the efficiency.
Define KPIs to be tracked on the launch day for Track. These could be #KR1: Number of Reservations done #KR2: Average Time taken to Confirm a Reservation #KR3: Ticket Size for Reservations Team.

Launch Day

Do live tracking of KPIs.
Effectively map out the customer journey and identify areas of friction during usage that cause users to drop off;
Reach out to customers who signed up, to understand their experience and gather feedback on areas of improvement. Repeat this for customers who did not sign up, to understand their reasons. This will help go back and make adjustments to the sign-up workflow.

Post-Launch Phase:

Check all data, including:
Rates of acquisition, adoption, conversion, the efficiency of the various sales and marketing channels for Track;
Any areas of customer feedback that need fixing, based on proof such as customer stories and testimonials from the initial adopters on the user experience and benefits of Track to their business.