Doudou: The guest of this Doudou interview is Pan Jin, the operations manager of Qingmango Travel Network, a subsidiary of Mango.com. In 2009, Mango.com acquired Yixiu.com and integrated resources to establish a wholly-owned company, Green Mango Travel Network ( www.qmango.com ). , positioned to provide low-cost and comfortable accommodation products for young white-collar workers, travelers, and students who are concerned about prices, including youth hostels, family hotels, specialty inns, and budget hotels. Today we share with Pan Jin the details of their website operations.
Pan Jin
The following is the QQ record of Doudou and Pan Jin:
Doudou 14:24:13
First, would you like to introduce yourself and the Green Mango site to new and old webmaster friends?
Pan Jin14:25:25
Let’s talk about Green Mango first: Green Mango Travel Network is a sub-brand of Mango Network. It is affiliated to the China Travel Service Group Hong Kong, China’s largest tourism group, and is also a central enterprise directly under the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission. Green Mango is the abbreviation of Green Mango Travel Network. Its customers are young people, representing youth and vitality, so it is named Green Mango. Green Mango is a travel website under Mango.com that specializes in affordable hotel bookings. It also provides bookings for air tickets, travel products and coupons for backpackers. At present, we have gathered many hotels in mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau, and can provide booking services for tens of thousands of hostels, inns, apartments, guest houses and affordable licensed hotels in Hong Kong and Macau across the country. We are the first in China. A purely online, partially prepaid, and fast-confirmation booking network is an excellent choice for young people, self-guided travelers, and travel enthusiasts to travel and find accommodation. Our goal is to be an industry leader and the largest low-cost hotel booking platform in China.
Pan Jin 14:25:51
Some netizens may confuse Mango.com and Green Mango.com. I will briefly talk to you about site positioning, functions, and operations. In early 2009, Mango.com successfully acquired Yixiu.com and launched a new brand - Green Mango Travel Network. On the one hand, Green Mango Travel Network supports domestic high-quality and low-cost hotels, independent hotels, and even family hotels, pioneering the pure online booking of hotels and inns. On the other hand, through its hotels and international youth hostels covering the whole country and its freely combined travel products, it has effectively filled the gap in the middle and low markets of Mango.com and achieved complementarity between the low, middle and high markets. In terms of hotel reservations, the main differences between Mango.com and Green Mango Travel.com are as follows:
1. Differences in product positioning. Mango.com mainly focuses on star-rated hotel bookings, while Green Mango Travel.com mainly focuses on budget and low-price hotel bookings.
2. Differences in booking models. Mango.com has two booking methods: phone and website, while Green Mango Travel.com uses a pure website booking method.
3. Different payment methods. Mango.com mainly uses the payment method at the front desk of the hotel. Green Mango Travel.com adopts a partial prepayment method. You can choose to pay a deposit of 10-30% of the total room rate first, and then pay the remaining part of the room rate when you arrive at the hotel. You can also pay the full amount in advance. Pay the room fee in advance to ensure the safety and convenience of booking.
Finally, let’s talk about myself. You can call me Jim. I officially entered the Internet in 2004 and have been engaged in site operations. Currently, I serve as the website operations manager of Green Mango.com. I am mainly responsible for the daily operations of the entire Green Mango website, including website construction. Customer experience, website promotion, user behavior analysis, data mining, etc., and also involved in product design, brand planning, channel construction, publicity and reporting, etc.
Doudou14:33:09
The website has developed since its creation in 2009. How is the current operation situation? Tell us about IP, PV, merchants, registered members and current profitability.
Pan Jin14:39:38
When Yixiu.com was acquired in 2009, it already had initial self-operation capabilities, which provided a good foundation for our later rectification. Therefore, our development speed was amazing. We repositioned it strategically and focused on low-end products. We focus on the low-price hotel market segment and provide hotel reservation services with an innovative pure online operation model. Relying on Mango.com's popularity and professional operation and service capabilities, we have quickly achieved great improvements in brand promotion, product scale and service quality.
Currently, there are more than 10,000 franchised hotels, and the number of registered members is about to exceed 1,000,000. The number of independent IPs per day is around 20,000, and the PV is around 65,000. As for profitability, our early focus is on the fastest To enhance brand influence, profit is not the focus of our current consideration, but now the profit is still considerable because of the brand influence of Mango.com, a large platform. Our investment is not large, but our development speed is very fast.
Doudou 14:43:31
There are many similar websites across the country. What are your own characteristics? How to attract users to pay attention to Green Mango, attract them, and then turn from visitors to registered users?
Pan Jin 14:45:50
Doudou’s question is very concise and sharp. This is also an issue that webmasters are more concerned about when operating a website. Ultimately, it is also the foothold for the development and growth of the website. There are many booking websites like ours across the country. I think similar websites have all thought about how to stand out. However, it is not about being new and unconventional that will lead to development. Rather, it is about focusing on users and improving their user experience from their standpoint. I think this is the key to success. Kingly way. Our biggest feature is that we focus on low-cost hotels. We can confidently say that our hotel prices are the lowest in the entire Internet industry and our services are the most considerate. Many hotels are our exclusive resources. Currently, we are the largest low-cost hotel in the country. The hotel reservation platform has a leading system platform, hotel and membership scale. It is the first and only hotel reservation website in China that is operated by a pure website and has a strong competitive advantage.
Doudou 14:51:14
At present, there are more than 10,000 Green Mango franchise hotels, and the number of registered members has exceeded 1,000,000. Such results are quite good for Green Mango, which was established less than 2 years ago. The participation of users and merchants is very high, so in How did you do promotion in the early stage?
Pan Jin 14:54:49
We use a combination of online and offline promotion methods. The online aspects include SEM, cooperation channels, soft articles, Weibo platforms, etc. Offline we mainly do campus promotion, including the campus ambassador recruitment activities we are currently doing. We promote by recruiting ambassadors on campus. For students who like to travel, we Provide them with quality and affordable services.
In terms of SEM, the SEO of the previous website was not very good. We are now constantly upgrading the new website to conduct a comprehensive optimization of the SEO of the entire website, especially in terms of long-tail words. In view of the fierce competition in the industry, my suggestion is To break through, you must rely on long-tail keywords and be careful and thorough. Through the analysis of users and competitive sites, we formulated an optimization strategy and made a long tail of almost 50,000 words. As long as each word is searched once a day, the daily traffic is 50,000. In view of the differences between Baidu and Google, we are doing them Adopt differentiated strategies when bidding. Now the market has become white-hot. To stand out, you must rely on the long tail and accumulation.
In terms of channels, we have established our own distribution network, such as vertical search sites such as Qunar, Kuxun, and Fangli.com, to integrate network channel resources to achieve a win-win situation.
Doudou15:09:59
You just mentioned that your biggest feature is your low price advantage, so during the negotiation process with the merchants, how can you let the merchants give more profits to the residents and maximize the enthusiasm of the merchants to participate in site activities?
Pan Jin15:12:04
When we negotiate with merchants, our only requirement is that the price guarantee for our customers is the lowest in the industry. On this basis, we must also ensure service. We sign relevant agreements with merchants to protect the interests of consumers, and conduct regular inspections. Once discovered, , punish merchants for compensating consumers, and default merchants will immediately remove the products from the shelves and never renew them.
We provide a platform for merchants to promote, and often jointly conduct activities to increase the merchant's local visibility, including SEM placement. The actual benefits they receive in the end cannot be measured in terms of money. In this way, we find a balance between consumers and merchants and do our best to maximize their interests.
We are in the service industry, and serving merchants and consumers is our greatest responsibility. For consumers, we provide them with hotels with the lowest prices on the market. This is our responsibility and obligation. For businesses, what we try our best to do is to help us increase the occupancy rate of our stores and increase their visibility and influence in their areas. After many hotels cooperate with us, their local influence has increased a lot. Many tourists named their hotel to stay.
Doudou15:24:23
Green Mango is affiliated to Mango.com, and the two complement each other. Let’s talk about their respective advantages in terms of positioning, functions, user experience, merchant entry, etc.?
Pan Jin15:26:49
The biggest difference is that the product positioning and target customers are different, so the specific operations are naturally different. Green Mango does not have the concept of call center. All work is done online, using prepayment and partial prepayment. You can choose to pay for the room first. A deposit of 10-30% of the total fee is required, and the remaining part of the room fee will be paid after arriving at the hotel. You can also pay the room fee in full in advance, ensuring the safety and convenience of booking.
Doudou15:29:48
When did Jim add Green Mango? Tell us about your current team building? (Number of personnel, team division of labor, daily management and operation model of the team, etc.)
Pan Jin15:32:03
I joined the Green Mango team not long ago. The current team size is less than 30 people, but our division of labor is very clear. People are assigned according to positions, and sometimes they can be transferred at any time due to special circumstances. Currently, it includes a technical team, a product team, a customer service team, and an operations team. There is a marketing team.
Pan Jin15:32:24
Because our current team is relatively small, we place more emphasis on execution and efficiency. The principles of team management are short, flat and fast. Each department has different responsibilities. For example, the product department is mainly responsible for signing contracts with hotels and hotel management, including the hotel's service quality, whether customers have complaints, and whether the hotel has rooms available for activities. Special offer rooms, etc.
You can say this. Each department faces different groups. The account manager mainly faces the hotel, the customer service department mainly faces our users, the technical department is responsible for platform system development, the operation is mainly responsible for the operation and promotion of the website, and the market is responsible for For the entire market development work, these teams are all connected, and the division of labor is clear and coherent, including that you must understand the needs of the hotel, the needs of users, the situation of opponents, including the development trends and directions of the entire Internet.
Doudou15:49:02
There are more than 10,000 Green Mango franchise hotels nationwide. These hotels are distributed all over the country. How did you dig out these high-quality and low-price hotel information in the early stage? In other words, how did you do the information collection and classification? ?
Pan Jin15:53:23
First of all, our website has a page for merchants to join. Now that the Internet has basically become democratized, merchants are also aware of the importance of online promotion. They are also trying their best to promote themselves to maximize their interests. We will conduct our own internal According to the assessment, only those who meet the requirements can join Green Mango. Most of the work like this is done online. They fill in the information in the Green Mango backend, and we review the hotel's information. This allows us to work on information collection after forming the brand. The investment is relatively small, and hotels will take the initiative to come to you. Therefore, the key lies in promotion. Once the reputation is established, the corresponding work will be easier.
Second, we have dedicated signing personnel to do this. They will find the key hotel resources we need to sign contracts.
Doudou 15:53:34
How profitable is the website now that it has grown to this day? What are the specific sources of income?
Pan Jin15:55:43
Our current profit situation is pretty good. The main source of revenue is hotel profit sharing. We are a medium-sized electronic website. There is a common demarcation line in the e-commerce industry, which is whether the number of your orders exceeds 1,000. /day, based on this standard, we are now beginning to take shape.
Doudou 15:59:54
How do you improve user experience and retain users?
Pan Jin 16:04:44
In terms of user experience, we have spent a lot of work. We want to build Green Mango into a more personalized and innovative website in the e-commerce industry. We provide the most convenient 3-step booking operation in the industry and provide links that are bound to members and orders. Green Mango's online communication service provides a variety of online payment methods for booking and payment. Others include order processing speed, replies to users, and prompt messages to users, etc., which are very user-friendly. In terms of products and services, we promise that our prices are the lowest and that we have rooms available in stores, all of which are focused on customer experience. At the same time, we also provide red envelopes, cash rebates and other discounts for consuming members. Judging from the results, customers are very satisfied with these measures of Green Mango. The repeat consumption rate is very high, which is why our membership development speed is so fast.
Doudou 16:14:12
Service sites generally adopt a combination of online and offline methods in early promotion. So how to encourage offline activities to move to the site and improve the conversion rate?
Pan Jin 16:16:14
All our offline activities are to increase the visibility of our website and develop new business models. For example, we have a marketing plan for Green Mango Ambassadors. We recruit our Green Mango Ambassadors on campus, which is equivalent to developing into our campus distribution Judging from the current response, the effect of this activity is very good. For each campus ambassador, we will open a website backend for him. The business he develops or the consumption records of the members he develops belong to him. We will Give him points back
Doudou 16:19:24
Many successful operators believe that if a website wants to gain high popularity, it should try its best to interact with users. On the Green Mango site, Doudou did not find a forum. Do e-commerce sites that provide daily life services like this open a forum? Will it be better to increase the popularity? What are your plans?
Pan Jin 16:19:43
Yes, user interaction is indispensable, because it can help the website complete user accumulation, user loyalty and stickiness, and it is very helpful in increasing users’ secondary consumption. The encyclopedia and travel topics we are currently developing, The Embarrassing Encyclopedia community developed by QQ and cooperation is a place to accumulate users and activate the atmosphere. Most of our users are college students, white-collar workers, travel friends, backpackers, etc. In the community we share more interesting things in life, including Travel guide, what travelers and backpackers saw and heard, experience sharing, etc.
In addition, we are creatively establishing the "Green Mango Gang", a joint system of members, hotels and websites, to provide guests with a more intimate, warm and interesting experience through gamified operations. At present, we can provide online group communication, allowing members, websites, and hotels to communicate with each other. We also provide text message communication, so you can communicate with us and the hotel through mobile phone text messages. In the future, we will also strengthen the construction of the "Green Mango Gang". Every member, hotel, and franchisee has an "identity." The details will be kept secret for now, haha.
Doudou 16:36:47
Looking at the current Green Mango from your own perspective, what aspects do you think need to be improved, strengthened or broken through?
Pan Jin 16:40:25
Now Green Mango is still in the entrepreneurial stage, including our website platform, popularity, brand influence, and number of hotels. The potential is huge and waiting for us to further explore. One of our slogans is "Green Mango, the home for travelers". As long as tourists want to go somewhere, they can book an affordable and comfortable hotel through Green Mango. Green Mango is the home for travelers. This requires us to strengthen and continuously improve product coverage, comfort, satisfaction, ease of operation, safety, etc.
Our main work at present and in the next stage is promotion. We want all young people and backpackers to think of Green Mango when they need to stay in a hotel. For this, we still have a lot to do. In terms of providing user experience, we have further optimized the process to make it as simple and fool-proof as possible to form a one-stop star-rated service that feels like home. This is our goal.
Doudou 16:46:07
Jim, when you talk about the development of Green Mango, Doudou can feel your enthusiasm and expectations for the future. I hope your site will get better and better and meet your expectations.
Pan Jin 16:46:26
Thanks.
Doudou 16:46:45
Jim, that’s all we talked about today. We’ll share when we have time. Thank you for participating in today’s webmaster.com interview. We’ll chat next time we have the opportunity.
Pan Jin 16:47:29
Okay, thank you Doudou, thank you Webmaster.com for providing me with a platform for webmasters to communicate, and I wish a5 better and better.
Thanks to Green Mango Travel Network for your contribution
There is also the industry alliance. We attach great importance to this area and have proposed a plan to establish a "travel alliance". Through the sharing and complementation of members, products, and platforms, we will establish a large travel alliance platform with the concept of low-cost and environmentally friendly travel. Achieve a win-win situation for many businesses and at the same time provide a wide range of tourists with rich, economical and practical tourism products. We attach great importance to every current website in the tourism industry, and we strive to establish cooperative relationships with each of them.
In terms of publicity and promotion, we choose large portals or professional websites such as NetEase, Tencent, Sohu, Sina, China Business Network, etc. to enhance its influence.
In fact, there are many ways to promote marketing. We are also learning and exploring, and we find the most suitable model in practice and recommend it.