INDUSTRY:
TRAVEL ARRANGEMENTS
COMPANY:
RENTCARS
YEAR:
2021 - 2023
ROLE:
UX/UI DESIGNER
Rentcars
about.
Rentcars is the largest online car rental platform in the Americas and one of the global leaders in the segment. At Rentcars, people can compare prices and car rental options from 200 hundreds of rental companies and book online. Currently, the company is present in more than 160 countries, with about 1,2 million monthly users on the platform.
As a UX/UI designer, I was part of a product squad whose main objective was improving the conversion rate and usability of the platform. I worked together with this team to analyze the main pain points of users on the booking funnel and propose improvements in the experience that also impacted directly the results for the business.
challenge.
The homepage was the most accessed page on the platform, corresponding to 13% of total pageviews.
Being the main user entry, it was the 4th page that had the greatest access to the chatbot, which users usually access with questions related to how to make a reservation on the website, and in many cases, they did the process directly with an attendant.
From a performance point of view, the page does not have a good rate when we analyzed the main requirements related to Google's Core Web Vitals, the page had an average performance of 70.
In addition, the lack of updating also makes the page look older, and the brand has recently undergone a rebranding, requiring a more modern adaptation according to the new brand guidelines.
research.
In the discovery step, several data sources were analyzed, the main ones used as a basis for the study were chatbot information, heat maps, navigation recordings and Google Analytics events. Also, a page analysis considering Nielsen's ten heuristics.
Chatbot
Analyzing the chatbot's reports and conversation transcripts, we could identify the main reasons for user contacts when they are on the homepage.With 40% of access, the main question is related to how to make the reservation, followed by 12% of general questions and 11% on how to configure the car.
Hotjar
When we observed the user's behaviour with the Hotjar tool, we notice that 87.49% of interactions are carried out in the search box located on the left side of the first fold of page.Other first-fold interactions have little or no interaction. Also, most users (75%) stick to the first fold.
Google Analytics
Another interesting fact is the Google Analytics events, in which 95% of the interactions are carried out in the search box. Other section of the page, such as the header (0.4%) and the communication banner (0.3%) has low interaction.
Page analysis
When performing an analysis of the page considering Nielsen's heuristics, were found two important points to be considered.
Consistency and standardization
Not only the homepage, but the entire application presents inconsistencies and lack of standardization in the interfaces, making the user needs to understand several patterns and different forms interactions on each screen, making the experience less clear and making it difficult to understand.
Aesthetics and minimalist design
The page have a lot of information, especially in the first fold. The greater the amount of information, the greater will be the user's effort to analyze and make a decision. It is essential to keep only the information that is really important and necessary for a given moment, therefore, the application becomes more efficient.
definition.
Considering the whole context, some starting points were defined to be worked on at the first moment.
Evidence the search box being the main objective of the page.
Allocate the Trustpilot component secondarily.
Change the location of the marketing banner area in a secondary way and below the first fold, as it directly impacts page performance.
Maintain content due to SEO page ranking.
Improve the look and feel of the page following the new brand guidelines and keeping other current projects as a reference.
Update of design system components with the aim of bringing standardization, consistency and modernization.
ideation.
Benchmarking
Three main competitors that are reference in the tourism and car rental market were analyzed. It was possible to identify relevant points that present a pattern between the companies.
The main insights were:
All presented well-structured pages, with a well-defined hierarchy, making the information clearer, more objective and easy to understand.
They present good visual appearance and standardization of the components, also, they bring a more clean and minimalist approach.
They use more neutral colors for most of the content on the pages, using other colors to highlight elements such as buttons, tags, promotions, among others.
The horizontal search engine is the main element of the page, leaving other information in the background.
Secondly, they present the company's advantages and the rating from the Trustpilot review site.
Moodboard
After analyzing the competitors, some others relevant references were also collected that could apply to the new project and serve as inspiration.
visual design.
Once the usability issues were defined, I moved on to design the final screens in Figma. My goal was to create a visual that is aligned with the brand’s values and resolve the problems.
For the project, we chose to use a minimalistic visual approach to include only the most essential elements and components to provide the user with a clean and clear vision to complete their tasks and final goals.
Thus, the main objective was to highlight the search box and leave other information in a secondary way, creating a hierarchy along the page.
The elements were considered thinking about the best experience, accessibility and performance of the page. Desktop and PWA (mobile) versions were created.
outcomes.
In assessing the outcomes, we implemented an A/B testing methodology that compared the two version of the desktop site, specifically for the pt-br language. Here's an overview of the data gathered:
Noticeable improvements in page performance, according to Core Web Vitals stats, rising on average from 70 to 92, an increase of 22.
A slight but noteworthy reduction in the bounce rate by 0.17% (from 12.66% to 12.49%).
Revenue per session saw an enhancement of 0.45% (increasing from R$ 13.23 to R$ 13.29).
