Every product decision this half either moves this number or it doesn't. If it doesn't, we shouldn't be building it.
01 — Outcomes we're seeking to deliver
Growth
Fix the front of the funnel. For good.
The back works — Add Trip, Trip to Bid, Bid to Sale all beating targets. The front is where we lose people. 56% of first transactions happen on day zero or day one. After that the probability drops sharply and doesn't recover. We have a narrow window. First-session drop-off from 25% to 10%.
Enterprise
Revenue intelligence TOCs can't get anywhere else.
Dynamic pricing live and yield-proven. Intelligence in daily use at 5+ operators by end of H1. Revenue growth they can see, trust, and attribute directly to Seatfrog. No commercial rail partner on earth is offering this right now.
02 — The big problems we're solving
01
Anxiety is the root cause. Not confusion.
15 A/B tests. 8 structured learning goals. One answer. Users aren't confused about what Seatfrog does — they're not sure it's real. They're not ready to commit before they've experienced it. The home screen overwhelms because it doesn't reduce anxiety. Onboarding fails because it explains rather than reassures. Fix the anxiety and the funnel fixes itself. That's not an optimisation insight. That's a design brief.
02
93% of upgrade buyers purchase their ticket elsewhere.
60% of ticket searches end the moment users see the price. We believe price is the barrier. We're now validating that through price comparison — a prototype sequence starting with best time to book, moving to a web-based surface across 20 carefully selected routes. If price is the barrier, comparison is the unlock and we earn the right to own the whole journey. If it isn't, we learn what actually drives attach and pivot. Early signal already showing +20% ticket attach.
03
TOCs are drowning in data. Making decisions from spreadsheets.
Seatfrog holds years of cross-network pricing signals, capacity patterns, and bidding behaviour that no individual operator and no competitor can replicate. We've never properly acted on it. Intelligence changes that. Not dashboards — answers. What's happening, why, and what to do. When the first partner said "we should have been doing this years ago" — that's the reaction you get when something shifts from useful to necessary.
04
Dynamic pricing was live in theory. Unproven in the wild.
Dynamic Instant Wins and Milestones shipped in careful limited rollout — real-time decision-making touching our most profitable mechanic. We protect the base while proving the new model. First yield delta results in now. Dynamic Reserves and the full TOC rollout ladder follow.
03 — Priority order and why
01
Fix the experience so value lands in the first session
Everything else compounds from this. A user who doesn't experience value in the first minute won't be there for anything else we ship. New home screen live. Dummy auction onboarding in build. Google SSO on Android fixed — already +8% sign-up improvement.
02
Prove dynamic pricing moves yield — not just impressions
Results in now. If positive: ladder rollout TOC by TOC — LNER, GWR, Avanti, EMR first, then the broader network. Protect the milestone model while opening the new one.
03
Get Intelligence into daily operator use
V0 drops week 2 of April. The measure isn't a demo — it's whether a revenue manager opens it instead of a spreadsheet. 2+ operators using it weekly without prompting.
04
Honour commercial commitments — they are not roadmap items
XC Secret Fare, TMC Partner Portal, TPE traction on Train Swap. Operator commitments attached. Everything sequences around these if capacity forces a call.
05
Validate price comparison as the next growth surface
Not a launch — a prototype sequence. Best time to book first, then web-based across 20 routes. Prove demand before building the platform.
04 — What moves the needle in the next 90 days
Growth
Dummy auction onboarding live — does experiencing the product before committing remove the anxiety?
New home screen results read — simplified, search-first, trust signals front and centre.
Mid-funnel bid anxiety tackled — guided first bid, route-level social proof, Instant Win as primary CTA for never-bid users.
Price comparison prototype across 20 routes — does beating the market on price unlock the full journey?
Dead end recovery — 27,500 users a month hitting a wall. Sub-search, availability alerts, CRM signals firing for first time.
XC Secret Fare and TMC Portal sequencing call made before Q2 opens.
Product V2MOM · H1 2026
Vision & Values
Our mission is to create undeniable value for travellers and partners. Both sides must get value or neither does.
Vision
For travellers, Seatfrog becomes the place that makes rail finally work the way it should. They find the right journey, pay a fair price, travel better than expected, and come back — not because we reminded them, but because we earned it.
For partners — operators and distribution platforms — Seatfrog becomes the intelligence layer they can't run their ancillary business without. We grow revenue they couldn't unlock alone, give them clarity instead of data, and bring new customers to rail they couldn't reach themselves.
The flywheel connects both. More travellers create more transactions and richer data. Partners get more revenue and better intelligence. They expand supply and invest in integration. If we create real value, the business outcomes follow. If we don't, nothing else matters.
Values
01
Customer delight, trust & retention
Design experiences that create magic moments. Remove friction ruthlessly. Set a new bar for UX and lifecycle.
02
Understand our data, act in real-time
Everyone acts on real-time insight. Accurate, automated, accessible data powers everything. This is our superpower.
03
Focused, high growth
Choose impact over activity. Momentum and validated learning over perfect planning.
04
A-Players & ownership
Every initiative has a clear owner. High accountability, meaningful contribution — progress, clarity, no passengers.
05
Finish the job
Done is not when something ships — it's when the impact is real. Measure outcomes and follow through.
06
Protect the moat
Long-term exclusive relationships. Product strategies that increase market reliance and lock in defensibility.
Q1 was a deliberate bet on understanding before building. 15 A/B tests. 8 structured learning goals. One answer that changed everything.
Methods
01
First-session value — every search leads somewhere
No dead ends. Tangible benefit in the first minute before they consider leaving. The product teaches itself rather than explaining itself.
02
Intelligence that drives partner decisions — not dashboards, answers
Partners see what's happening and know what to do. Proactive recommendations, not data exports. V0 in hands of an operator by week 2 of April.
03
Dynamic pricing at scale — carefully
ML-driven, real-time, service-level. Prove yield improvement in controlled trials before expanding. Protect the milestone model while proving the new one.
Initiatives
Growth
Redesign the first 60 seconds
Home screen overwhelm confirmed. 4 routes to the same thing, value banner mistaken for ads. New home screen ships. Dummy auction onboarding follows. Google SSO on Android fixed — +8% sign-up improvement.
+10% onboarding-to-search conversion
Fix Secret Fare dead ends
Anywhere search, station broadening, advance ticket fallback, Avanti Superfare live in app for first time. No dead end — just options users didn't know existed.
Dead end exit rate measurably reduced
Enterprise
Dynamic pricing — live, limited, measured
Dynamic Instant Wins shipped January. Dynamic Milestones shipped February — limited rollout, real-time decision engine. First yield delta results in now. Dynamic Reserves model in build.
Yield delta vs control — first read end of Q1
Seatfrog Intelligence — prototype to engineerable
AI-native prototype scoped hard to V1. Dashboard, Ask LLM, Routes & Capacity. Rail Intelligence Graph (Brain) is the explainability layer. V0 drops week 2 April. Moving 7x faster with AI-native build process.
V0 in operator hands — wk2 April
Trip Model — foundation work
Smarter Inventory and Accurate Loads shipped. Per Journey Inventory Check carries to Q2. ~50% of scope landed.
~50% Q1 scope delivered
Q2 · April – June 2026
Where the bets pay off.
Q2 is where Q1's work lands in the real world. Intelligence goes live with operators. Growth experiments get their real read. Commercial commitments deliver.
Methods
01
Get users from onboarding to first meaningful action
This is the #1 priority. 56% of first transactions happen day zero or day one — after that the probability drops sharply. The homepage, onboarding, guided bid flow, and mid-funnel work all serve this one goal.
02
Price comparison — validate before you build the platform
Best time to book prototype first. Web-based surface across 20 routes. Prove demand exists before committing to a platform build. Early signal already showing +20% ticket attach.
03
Intelligence earns daily operator use
V0 in market. The feedback loop stays deliberately open — we learn from what operators ask before we roadmap what comes next. Marketing attribution data is the first output we know they want.
04
Dynamic pricing — ladder TOC by TOC
Yield delta confirmed. Rollout starts LNER, GWR, Avanti, EMR — each deployed independently, monitored before the next. Remaining network follows through H2.
05
Honour commercial commitments first
XC Secret Fare and TMC Portal are not roadmap items — they are operator commitments. Everything sequences around them if capacity forces a call.
Initiatives
Growth — 6 Themes
Theme 1: Onboarding to first meaningful action
New homepage experience read in Q2. Dummy auction onboarding live. Beginner's Luck prominent, Instant Win as primary CTA for never-bid users, guided first bid flow shipping now.
First-session drop-off 25% → 10%
Theme 2: Getting more users to place their first bid
56,000 users a month spend 2 minutes on the auction details page and leave without bidding. Guided first bid, "you only pay if you win" prominent, route-level social proof, Instant Win repositioned for the anxious segment.
Mid-funnel bid rate meaningfully improved
Theme 3: Making the funnel easier to complete
Users who've decided to bid drop during entry — unclear increments, friction at commitment. New bid entry UI removes ambiguity. Users who start a bid have already decided. Our job is not to get in the way.
Bid completion rate improved
Theme 4: Dead end recovery across the funnel
27,500 users a month hit a wall and leave permanently. Sub-search (find the upgrade on the connecting leg), availability alerts capturing intent, CRM dead-end recovery programmes unlocked.
Dead end permanent exit rate below 10%
Theme 5: Give CRM the signals to work
Exit event on auction details page — 56,000/month, currently zero recovery. Bid outcome event on losing — 15,000/month currently receive nothing. Post first-win trigger — research shows 5 engagements in 30 days = 2x retention.
All major lifecycle programmes have real triggers
Theme 6: Understand the late-stage drop
40,000 high-intent users a month making it through the full funnel and not finishing at the last step. Ben and Dirk investigating now. Clear diagnosis before product scopes anything. Build the right thing or build nothing.
Clear diagnosis — late Q2 addition or Q3 priority
Enterprise
Intelligence V0 in market — feedback loop open
V0 live with first operator. Feedback deliberately unstructured — we learn what questions get asked before we roadmap the next features. Marketing attribution data is the first known output. Ask LLM question development informed by real use.
Weekly active use by 2+ operators without prompting
Dynamic pricing — TOC rollout ladder
LNER, GWR, Avanti, EMR deployed independently in sequence. Each monitored before the next goes live. Remaining TOC network follows H2. Dynamic Reserves integrated into analyst tooling.
Top 4 TOCs live on dynamic pricing by end Q2
Revenue management tooling — sequenced
Window extension fix first — it's a blocker. Then V1 analyst tool for reserve creation and editing. Path to TOC self-serve reserve editing opens in Q3. This is a chain, not parallel work.
Window extension fixed · analyst tool V1 live
XC Secret Fare + TMC Partner Portal
Hard operator commitments — not optional. XC integration must land this quarter. TMC estimate outstanding — sequencing call needed before Q2 opens. What comes after XC is a product strategy question that needs resolving in Q2 for H2 planning.
Both live by end Q2
Train Swap — swap grades & flexible tickets
Commercial risk. Loss of Cross Country makes TPE visibility urgent. Swap grades and flexible ticket use cases must move in Q2. Can't slip to H2 without a direct conversation about what that means commercially.
Intelligence is Seatfrog's first GBR play — we are the only cross-operator data layer that exists today. That is exactly what a consolidated network needs. Train Swap becomes more strategically important under GBR, not less — flexible ticketing and network-wide disruption management are core to what GBR promises passengers. DfT and TPR engagement is not a Q2 deliverable but it should inform how we position Intelligence, how we talk about cross-operator benchmarking, and how we frame Secret Fare expansion. Every enterprise decision this quarter should be tested against: does this make us look like infrastructure or just an upgrade app?
Delivery Plan · H1 2026
What we're building. When it lands.
Run this against the team. The V2MOM pages are for strategy conversations. This is for execution.