Home

Work

Experience

Home

Work

Experience

Enhancing the car rental website's service

Booking a rental car should be simple, but users often struggled with hidden fees, unclear navigation, and a lengthy checkout process. This project focused on streamlining the experience to make booking faster, more transparent, and frustration-free.

Design tools

Design tools

Figma, UsabilityHub, Google Forms

Date

Date

February 2024

Role

Role

UX designer

Duration

Duration

6 weeks

Collaboration

Collaboration

stakeholders and developers to ensure feasibility and technical implementation.

Challenge

The existing car rental booking experience was overwhelming, causing high drop-off rates, especially on the add-ons selection page. Users found it difficult to compare car options and navigate the checkout process, leading to frustration and abandoned bookings. My goal was to streamline the process, enhance clarity, and improve conversion rates.

Solution

To improve the booking experience, I focused on clarity, simplicity, and user control through key design enhancements:

  • Clearer Car Options & Pricing – Redesigned the options page to make car comparisons effortless, with transparent pricing displayed upfront.

  • Simplified Add-ons Section – Streamlined the add-ons selection process, using clear descriptions and a more intuitive layout to reduce confusion.

  • Optimized Navigation & Flow – Introduced a step-by-step booking process with a progress tracker, ensuring users always knew where they were in the journey.

Strategic Value

By identifying the key pain points in the car hire booking process, we can enhance the overall user experience, leading to greater customer satisfaction, improved booking efficiency, and increased conversions. A smoother, more intuitive platform will encourage more users to complete their bookings, ultimately boosting engagement and revenue.

Research Choices

I combined benchmarking and usability testing to identify industry best practices and improve the car rental booking experience. By analyzing competitors and conducting user tests with surveys, I gathered key insights to inform design decisions, enhance usability, and streamline the booking process.

Analysis approach


I transformed raw data into actionable insights using a user journey map and affinity diagram, creating a clear roadmap for the design process. This approach helped me prioritise features and solutions that aligned with user goals and business objectives, ensuring a focused and effective design strategy.

Design

With a user-centric approach, I transformed research insights into intuitive, visually appealing designs. Each iteration was refined for testing, ensuring alignment with user expectations and readiness for validation.

Research Choices


User research

I conducted usability testing to uncover real-world user behaviour and pain points, ensuring the design aligns with actual needs. This included 3-4 in-depth user tests and a survey of 20 participants, providing actionable insights to refine the user experience and improve decision-making.


Benchmarking Reviews

This benchmarking and survey exercise provided a clear understanding of industry standards in car rentals, helping identify best practices and gaps in user experience. By comparing key providers, I uncovered opportunities to enhance service quality and streamline the booking process.




Please feel free to click through

Key Insights:

Through user interviews, surveys, and benchmarking, I identified key pain points in the booking process. Common challenges included difficulty comparing car options and unclear navigation, leading to frustration and drop-offs

Through user interviews, surveys, and benchmarking, I identified key pain points in the booking process. Common challenges included difficulty comparing car options and unclear navigation, leading to frustration and drop-offs

User quotes: fred

While reviewing the add-on page, the user chose to book their friend as an additional driver. “ its not that transparent. Could just say extra driver instead of optional extras"

User quote: Jack

user was Still on the add on page and was describing loss damage waver

User knew what the answer was but couldn't explain it in great detail. 

“ I know what it is but I can tell you off hand.”

User quote: Tina

User was asked about the lost damage waver

Did not know what it meant.

“God! I have no idea what that means!”

Unclear pricing

Issue: 4 out of 5 users expressed confusion about the final cost due to hidden fees.

  • Direct user quote: “I'm uncertain about the add-on fees. It seems expensive, but I don’t know why.”

  • Observed Behaviour: Some users abandoned their booking when faced with unclear pricing.

Overcomplicated
checkout

Issue: Lack of transparency in pricing led to uncertainty and hesitation during checkout.


4 out of 5 users expressed confusion about the final cost due to hidden fees.

  • Direct user quote: “I'm uncertain about the add-on fees. It seems expensive, but I don’t know why.”

  • Observed Behaviour: Some users abandoned their booking when faced with unclear pricing.

Confusing add-ons
section

Issue:3 out of 5 users found the add-ons unclear and were unsure what they were paying for.

  • Direct user quote: “God! I have no idea what that means!”

  • Observed Behaviour: Some users skipped add-ons entirely, while others hesitated, unsure if they were necessary.

Analysis

We reviewed all the gathered research and created an affinity diagram to organise key insights. This visual representation of our findings will guide our analysis and inform design decisions in the later stages of the UX process.


Jump to affinity Diagram

Jump to User Journey map

Based on the user journey map, it was evident that there was a consistently negative perception around the add-ons section. Initially, I hadn’t planned to focus on this area, but insights from various research methods highlighted it as a key issue worth addressing

To solve the problem, we need to…

Simplified Booking
Flow

Consolidated steps for a more intuitive process.!

Transparent Pricing
Summary

Added a clear breakdown of all costs upfront

Refined Add-ons
Section

Used visual cues and tooltips to explain optional extras

The flow & Sketching the user journey

Building on the customer journey map from the previous project, I designed a high-level booking flow that aligned with the 'ideal' or 'happy' path for users. Guided by user feedback, I sketched initial wireframes to reduce cognitive load by breaking the booking process into clear, manageable steps. This approach allowed me to identify critical pain points, refine the flow with purpose, and create an intuitive, user-centred experience that met user needs and expectations.

The flow & Sketching the user journey

UI elements

After user testing, I gathered key insights into user pain points in the car hire booking process and explored solutions to enhance usability. Simultaneously, I developed a structured design system based on atomic design principles, ensuring consistency across UI elements and streamlining the booking experience.

Outcome

  1. The homepage is user-friendly, clear, and free of jargon

Users can easily navigate the homepage and quickly understand the pickup and drop-off locations for their car rental.

  1. The options page offers clearer car choices with a transparent price view.

Users previously struggled to find individual information, but this has been resolved. All details are now easy to select, and the best options are displayed immediately upon loading the screen.

  1. The final page shows a clear breakdown for the user.

This page provides a comprehensive breakdown of the customer's final purchase details, ensuring transparency and clarity. It also delivers a well-structured overview of available add-ons, enhancing the user experience by presenting key information in an intuitive and accessible manner.

Other Booking sites

❌ Long, confusing checkout process

❌ Hidden fees & unclear pricing

❌ Add-ons were cluttered and hard to understand


Car hire

✅📈 30% faster booking times, reducing friction in the process.

✅📉 20% decrease in drop-offs on the final payment page.

✅ 🛒 Higher user confidence, as reflected in post-redesign survey feedback.




Feedback

"Your car rental prototype has a clear and linear flow, which is great for testing the high-level interactions, layout, and overall user experience. The call-to-action buttons are well-designed and effectively guide users through the booking process. I also appreciate the inclusion of the auto-fill feature—it’s a nice touch that enhances usability. over all there were to many steps for the user and the add on section was quite clunky. Additionally, the calendar functionality needs attention. While you can navigate between months, the dates don’t update according to the selected month, which can be confusing. Improving this interaction will make the calendar more intuitive." Kerry-Ann

Future Scope and Learnings

Further A/B testing on CTA placements and pricing visibility could optimise conversions even more. Exploring personalization features, such as recommended cars based on user preferences, could enhance the booking experience.