Hertz Car Rental - Vehicle Price Comparison
Feature Concept
Project Overview
The goal of this project is to increase conversions by optimizing the path to checkout. The optimization focuses on customer retention by giving them all the information they need to make a purchase within the site. Reducing the opportunities for potential customers from going to a competitor's website.
My Role
The ultimate goal is to lower website bounce rates and increase conversions.
Map out the current online rental process and identify potential drop-off areas.
Produce lo-fi design wireframes while incorporating the optimizations found during the research phase. Utilize lo-fi wireframes as talking points for user interviews.
Produce hi-fi design mockups to allow the highest level of visual prototyping and production.
The Problem
Not enough information is provided to a customer before reaching the checkout, opening the opportunity to explore other options in the market.
Competitive Analysis
Based on market research it seems that price comparisons is not the industry standard across websites. Lack of clear conversion pathing is pretty common, with some websites providing too much information or not enough information in the right areas.
Fox Car Rental - No price comparison
Enterprise - No price comparison
Budget Car Rental - No price comparison
National Car Rental - No price comparison
User Research: Surveys
Ran a simple multi-question survey through Survey Monkey & Google Survey utilizing multiple ad platforms to reach the target users aged 25+ all located in the USA
What kind of information do you look for when renting a car?
Do you look at multiple rental car companies when renting a car?
Do you compare prices when looking to rent a car?
What’s your go-to website when renting a car?
Would you be more likely to rent a car if you were shown a clear price comparison?
Would a clear price comparison make you less likely to shop around?
User Research: Results
Sample size: 103 people
Despite the sample size not being large, the results were very consistent.
A staggering 88 of the 103 people that completed the survey stated that they compare prices when looking for a car rental and 79 people stated they would be more likely to complete a purchase if there was a clear price comparison shown.
Market Research
“This implies that once a buyer has decided what to purchase, in terms of brand and model, there are only a few distinctions among online vendors of the goods. In many, and probably most, cases the main distinguishing factor is price. If this is the case, price comparison will determine, in large measure, where the shopper will buy.”
https://clutejournals.com/index.php/JBER/article/download/8068/8122/32168
In some circumstances, it may be better to show that a competitor has a lower price and not have the database system automatically beat competitors’ pricing.
“To test the effect of telling consumers to compare, there were two additional sets of auctions, again with starting prices of the adjacent CDs being either 99 cents or $6.99 and the middle CD starting at $1.99. In these groups, however, auction participants were explicitly told to compare the $1.99 price to its neighbors. The result was that prices of the adjacent CDs became statistically irrelevant to what was bid on the middle disc and the buyers in general became much more cautious and risk adverse.
“The mere fact that we had asked them to make a comparison caused them to fear that they were being tricked in some way,” said Simonson.”
http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/asking-consumers-compare-may-have-unintended-results
Extremely in depth report and study based around PCW (Price Comparison Websites)
https://www.fca.org.uk/publication/research/price-comparison-website-consumer-research.pdf
Prototype & Interview Findings
The research found that the “Pay Later” button was not clear enough button was then changed to “Pay Upon Pick-Up”
Changed the “loading” overlay to no longer say “Loading” but will now display the next step in the process, example “Next Step: Choose Your Vehicle”
Some text was converted to icons after a split test that displayed text vs icons for seats / doors / mileage.
The price comparison area went through multiple iterations of “highlighting” the best price.
Usability Tests
Low-fi wireframes went through multiple iterations after continuous user interviews from both rental car company employees and consumers that semi-frequently rent cars for business trips or occasional vacations.
Key Additions
Added price compare section with Hertz price being highlighted most
Provided information on competitors’ prices but made them less of a focus
Changed "Pay Later" to be "Pay Upon Pick-Up" so it's clear
Changed text of this area to a cleaner icon based design
The Solution
Optimized the flow of checkout by providing pertinent information in a streamlined fashion, allowing all age groups and technical literacy demographics to be able to complete a purchase quickly on any device.
One of the largest gaps in the market currently is the lack of easily accessible price comparisons without using a 3rd party website or tool (ex. kayak), this has been identified as not only a pain point but also an opportunity for a lost conversion.
Proposed Price Comparison Integration v1
By displaying a clear price comparison during vehicle selection by pulling in data of competitors' pricing for the same vehicle.
The data would then be stored and matched against a database of Hertz pricing automatically reducing the price (if needed) to beat competitors.
In the event that the competitor's price is too low for Hertz profit margins and they're unable to compete, a possible solution would add other variables in order to compensate such as slight price increases in other areas (insurance, return fees).
Research does show that having the lowest prices is not always the best solution.
Additional Benefits of Optimizing Website Checkout Flow:
Reduction in customer service requests
Reduction of confused customers
Increase in overall consumer brand perception
Further & Next Steps
As always website optimization and conversion pathing is something that continuously needs to be tested, this will always be an ongoing task.
Utilize heatmaps to identify further pain pints or areas in need of deeper interaction.
Gather and record as much support ticket data as possible to identify common questions or website errors.
Utilize usertesting.com to gather direct test data from a user's screen recording and explanation.