Prep.a.Trip helps people organize group trips. Our goal is to make spreadsheets, pdfs, and word docs disappear from planning trips.

Currently we have branded ourselves toward outdoor trips, but are interested in expanding its brand to trips in general. We have the following tools: logistic map planning tool, group equipment signup sheet, expense splitting calculator, potluck sign up tool, personal packing list, and check lists.

Unfortuantely we weren't as customer driven as we should have been in the beginning. So now since we have the tools built, we're experiementing to find out the best way group organizers would actually use our website.

Test #1: Expense Splitting Tool

I have a hypothesis that every group trip planner, whether it be outdoors or travel abroad or family, need to break down their expenses and would want to use a tool like ours. There are many other expense startups in the market, but they all require logins and multiple steps, however ours does not.

I've created this landing page and am using google ads to funnel traffic to our site and see how people interact with it ( lots of reporting for any click you make ).

Challenges

Google Ads are highly competitive ( $3-5 per click ) because the amount of expense tools is saturated. As a result, we have to focus on the cheaper, less compeitive ads ($1-$2) with less people, however way more targeted.

Prep.a.Trip Expenses - image 1 - student project

Results:

I spent $100 in google ads, sent about 100 people over to me, and got a 2% conversion rate. Looking into more details.. when I configured my ads to hit niche keywords like "trip expense calculator", I got 50% of my hits from "trip gas expense calculator".. FAIL.

James McBryan

Co-founder of Prep.a.Trip

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