Online Booking Engine
Online Booking Engine: Building a Direct-to-Consumer Hotel E-commerce Platform
Project Overview
I led the product build of an Online Booking Engine (OBE) — a real-time e-commerce website enabling hotels to sell available rooms directly to guests, without relying on Online Travel Agencies (OTAs). The OBE is a strategic revenue lever because it helps hoteliers reduce commission costs, strengthen brand ownership, and increase direct booking margins.
The platform was designed to operate as a high-availability, performance-sensitive checkout experience, similar to an OTA, with complete support for responsive navigation (mobile/tablet/desktop) and a strong focus on conversion funnel optimization.
Business Need & Initial Challenges
The hospitality market has shifted significantly toward mobile-first booking behavior. Guests increasingly browse, compare, and complete purchases on smartphones and tablets, which means the OBE had to be designed as a responsive, frictionless checkout journey — fast, reliable, and intuitive across devices.
The challenge was to deliver an e-commerce flow that could handle real-time availability and pricing logic while maintaining strong performance and measurement accuracy across the full booking journey, including edge cases such as drop-offs, payment interruptions, or session changes between domains.
My Role & Responsibilities
As product owner for this initiative, I led discovery, prioritization, and end-to-end delivery of the Online Booking Engine, staying closely involved with engineering to continuously refine requirements and remove blockers.
A core part of my role was to establish a robust measurement and optimization framework. I coordinated the engagement of an external analytics partner to implement Google Analytics (including cross-domain tracking) and ensure accurate funnel measurement from entry pages to booking confirmation.
I also drove the adoption of behavior analytics using Hotjar, enabling session recordings and heatmaps to identify friction points (confusing UI elements, dead-clicks, hesitation zones, and form abandonment). These insights fed a continuous improvement loop for UX, conversion, and stability.
Solution Design & Implementation
The Online Booking Engine was built as a modern web commerce product with a strong focus on speed, responsiveness, and measurable outcomes. Beyond a standard booking UI, the platform included an analytics layer enabling hoteliers to understand and optimize their own booking funnel.
Because the booking journey could span multiple domains (e.g., website domain to payment/checkout domain), we implemented cross-domain analytics continuity to preserve attribution and accurately track the funnel steps end-to-end — critical for reliable conversion analysis and ROI reporting.
The platform was structured to support iterative optimization (A/B testing readiness, funnel drop-off analysis, and UX experimentation), while ensuring production reliability for a revenue-critical checkout system.
Tools, Technologies & Environment
- Backend / Framework: ASP.NET Core
- Analytics: Google Analytics (funnel tracking, dashboards, reporting)
- Behavior Analytics: Hotjar (heatmaps, session recordings, UX friction analysis)
- Product Domain: E-commerce checkout, conversion funnel optimization, direct booking
- Key Capability: Cross-domain tracking to preserve end-to-end funnel continuity
Project KPIs & Delivery Metrics
- Checkout funnel fully instrumented (entry → selection → cart → guest details → payment → confirmation)
- Responsive UX delivery for mobile/tablet/desktop experiences
- Cross-domain analytics implemented to ensure accurate attribution and conversion measurement
- Continuous optimization loop combining quantitative (GA) and qualitative (Hotjar) insights
Results & Business Impact
This initiative strengthened the direct-to-consumer channel by providing hotels with a professional e-commerce booking experience, reducing dependency on OTAs and enabling more controlled customer acquisition.
By combining performance focus with deep funnel analytics and behavior insights, the product enabled structured conversion optimization, faster identification of UX issues, and clearer ROI visibility for stakeholders and hotel operators.
Skills Developed
- Product: E-commerce funnel ownership, conversion optimization, KPI-driven prioritization
- Analytics: Funnel design, cross-domain tracking strategy, dashboarding & reporting
- UX Research: Behavior analytics, heatmaps/session recording interpretation, friction reduction
- Delivery: Cross-functional coordination with external partners and engineering teams
Knowledge & Key Learnings
This project reinforced how performance, measurement, and user behavior insights must be treated as first-class product requirements in revenue-critical e-commerce systems. It also deepened my ability to operationalize analytics (events, funnels, attribution) and transform insights into iterative product improvements.
Why This Experience Matters for My Next Role
This experience demonstrates my ability to lead a high-impact e-commerce product end-to-end — combining product strategy, delivery execution, analytics governance, and optimization. It strongly supports my positioning for Senior Product Manager, Product Lead, or Head of Product roles in SaaS and commerce environments where measurable outcomes and platform reliability are essential.
