Drive Car Hire

Client

Drive Car Hire

Year

2019

Role

UX/UI design

Drive Car Hire is a car rental company based in Hobart, Tasmania. They were looking to improve their customer’s experience and increase online bookings with an overhaul of their current website.

I worked closely with the project manager to collaborate with the client, and two developers to create the new website. The internal marketing teams also helped produce SEO content and SEM ads. It was my responsibility to help discover and scope the project requirements and then determine the best solution to meet the requirements and give the best outcome for their customer base within a limited timeframe.

Discovery

Anna and John were finding it was becoming more difficult to attract new customers and retain visibility in an increasingly competitive space with larger third party hire companies moving into the Tassie market.

The project manager and I spoke with Anna and John about their vision for the business, what they were finding worked well and what needed improving.

Project goals

1
Update their website to match their new branding.
2
Convert more customers through the website rather than over the phone.
3
Improve visibility through Google with better content, SEO and SEM ads.

Research methods

Car hire market research analysis
Pattern research for existing mental models
Heuristic review of the online booking flow

Findings

Opportunities to explore partnerships

Anna and John had many local partnerships with vendors in Tasmania where they could offer their customers competitive rates for other activities and services on their trips.

Value propositions of the company were lost

Anna and John had some fantastic value propositions that were not clear through the overwhelming amount of information on their exisiting site. These USPs offered a great opportunity to highlight some of the benefits of booking through a local small business.

It was difficult to book through the website

There was a lot of drop off from customers finding the current booking engine difficult to use. We learnt their customers would usually call to book. Unfortunately their analytics was not set up properly in the checkout flow so there was no historical data in Google Analytics to corroborate any findings there. This meant we had to rely on anecdotal evidence from the client.

Project constraints

They were using an integrated booking platform that they explained was difficult to use, and suspected that it was the reason why their customers weren’t booking online and were calling instead. They were locked in to using this tool, so we had to work with what they had.

Each page of the booking engine could handle front end modifications to improve the user experience, the only page that couldn’t be altered was the payment page. Therefore it was important spend time improving the customer experience for the rest of the checkout flow.

Solutions

Partnerships and special offers added to the website

Creating a section of the website for special offers and local attractions would help contribute to better rankings on Google - a win win for improving organic search visibility and showcasing some of the benefits of booking with them to visitors.

Improved checkout flow

The new checkout flow was modelled around existing mental models, best practices and learnings from market competitor analysis.

Reorganised the content to leverage the value propositions

Similar to airlines, cruise fares upgrade bookings with on board credit, WiFi and drinks packages. We received many requests for this from our customers, so after it was released we saw cruise bookings increase month on month.

Branding

I added design flourishes to build on their brand identity. I used ‘Interstate’ font on their website which is based on lettering used in street signage and included subtle animations and transitions in the design to emphasise motion and give movement.

Exploring Tassie

We used their unique partnerships to create special offers along with pages about things to do with local vendors in Tasmania which their customers could use as a guide.

These included a mix of tourist hotspots as well as the activities by local vendors, with some information along with the hours of operation, contact details and a map for context.