Why we built saved searches with deal alerts into FlashSeat
Three weeks after launch, a user emailed us at 11 p.m. on a Wednesday. She'd found a Coldplay ticket for £28 on FlashSeat that morning, bookmarked it in her phone notes, and spent eight hours refreshing the app to see if the price would drop again. It didn't. She bought it at full flash price, then sent us a message that still sits in our inbox: 'I would have paid for that.'
The person who knew what they wanted but not when
That email changed how we thought about FlashSeat. We'd built the app around flash deals on flights and event tickets because we believed in the thrill of discovery. A surprise concert ticket at an unbelievable price. A last-minute flight to Barcelona that costs less than a night out. The deals were real. The value was there.
But we'd missed something obvious: not every user is spontaneous in the same way. Some of our audience - budget-conscious travellers and event fans aged 18 to 40 - knew exactly what they wanted. A specific artist. A particular sporting event. A route they flew regularly. They didn't need us to surprise them with random deals. They needed us to surprise them with deals that mattered to them.
That distinction sounds small. It was everything.
Building a system that learns what you actually care about
We started paying attention to how users moved through the app. The ones who returned weren't browsing randomly. They were searching for the same thing repeatedly. Searching for 'London to Paris flights' four times in a week. Typing 'Glastonbury tickets' and then leaving the app in frustration because nothing was live that day. Coming back tomorrow to search again.
It was exhausting to watch. Worse, we knew we were losing these users to competing platforms that had solved this problem. So we built saved searches with deal alerts into the app. You search for what you want - a route, an event, a genre of comedy show - and you save it. Set your notification preferences. Then FlashSeat watches for flash deals that match your search. When something hits, you get an alert.
The feature sounds straightforward. It took longer to build than we expected because we had to get the timing right. Too many notifications and users silence them. Too few and the feature becomes pointless. We settled on pushing alerts only for flash deals that genuinely match your search terms, not every tangential result we could stretch to fit. Premium and Pro members get early access to deal alerts; Free tier users get them too, but a few minutes after the initial drop.
What saved searches actually meant for retention
Two months in, we saw the pattern in our data. Users with active saved searches opened the app 3.2 times more often than those who didn't. They weren't browsing. They were checking for their thing. And when a deal matched their search, they booked. The conversion rate on alerted deals was 22 percent higher than on discovered deals.
The insight wasn't that notifications drive downloads or that alerts are trendy. It was that people who get notified about something they genuinely want will act on it. No guilt purchase. No decision paralysis. They knew what they wanted. We just told them when it was worth buying.
That's when we understood that the feature wasn't about engagement metrics or stickiness. It was about building something useful. A person who loves indie gigs doesn't want to refresh FlashSeat hoping for a Fontaines D.C. ticket. They want to save that search, go about their week, and have us tell them when it's real.
Why premium and pro members see deals first
Saved searches with deal alerts work across all tiers. Free users get them. Premium members at £7.99 a month get them faster - early access to notifications means they see matches a few minutes before others. Pro members at £14.99 a month get the same early access and, more importantly, they see members-only deals that never appear to free users.
This structure reflects something we learned in those first weeks: urgency isn't theoretical for flash deals. When a genuine bargain lands on flights or event tickets, it moves. The difference between finding out in minute one and minute five can mean the difference between booking and refreshing an empty page.
We didn't design early access to pressure anyone into upgrading. We designed it because we wanted to serve different types of deal hunters. Some people are happy browsing free tier deals when they land. Others check FlashSeat every morning and want the best shot at the premium inventory. Both are valid. The saved search feature works for both.
The question we still wrestle with
Nearly a year in, saved searches have become the second most-used feature in the app after the flash deals themselves. Thousands of users have saved searches active. We push thousands of deal alerts daily. The feature is working.
But it's made us think differently about what FlashSeat is. We started as a place to discover unexpected deals on flights and event tickets. We still do that. But we've become something else too: a place to watch for deals you're actually looking for. A tool that removes the friction of hunting. That sounds simple until you realise it changes the entire dynamic between the user and the app.
The question we keep returning to is whether we've found the balance right. Have we made it easy enough to save a search and set an alert, or have we buried the feature? Are we pushing the right number of notifications, or are we still getting it wrong? Every time someone replies to a deal alert with a booking, and every time someone goes silent on a feature they stopped using, we learn something.
That Wednesday night email still reminds us that the person refreshing the app eight times to watch a price isn't broken. We were just building the wrong tool. What deal have you been watching for and wishing someone would just tell you when it's worth buying?