I was asked by Holiday Autos to help them improve their the web based ordering system for rental cars. I worked closely with the internal development team evaluating the existing solution, and designing a new one. The end result turned out to be a great success when tested on users. The time needed to complete the order was reduced to as little as one third.
Holiday Autos is the world’s largest leisure car hire broker available in 80 countries offering rental cars in over 4000 destinations all over the world. They were the first broker to offer fully-inclusive pre-paid car hire. The company does most of their business on line and are totally dependent on the usability in their on line bocking system.
I was therefore was asked by to evaluate the ordering form and if possible remove any obstacles or for the users when ordering. The project goal was to increase conversion rates and reduce calls to customer care. In my opinion this was a perfect starting point. Working with clear goals always helps the team to focus.
Phase one was to evaluate the current solution. This was done by classic usage test with seven respondents. They were presented to a scenario in which they were to order a rental car for their fictional holiday. In order to get the scenario as realistic as possible the users own favorite destination was chosen.
The initial usage test was conducted using screen recording software. The test revealed major usability issues that called for a re design of the ordering flow
Some major usability issues was identified. All users experienced some kind of difficulty in figuring out the ordering flow. Even though all users were affected by the problems, the issues found in the site affected the women in the study more than than men. To our astonishment all 3 women in the test, or 43%, failed to order while the men succeeded. It seemed like the women hesitated to progress in the ordering process if they were feeling confused, while the men clicked on continue and hoped for the best, even with insufficient information. The result of the test was still very clear. A redesign was needed!
The development team could, based on the test result, immediately apply some minor improvements on the site, even before the redesign process was started. For example, texts that were found hard for the users to understand was replaced with an easier language. The minor changes resulted in an immediate improvement of the user experience.
Example of a conceptual sketch from the project. The sketch shows the new simplified solution for the first step of the ordering flow on the holiday autos start page.
The next step was to apply the lessons learned from the evaluation, in the design of the booking process. I started to go through the flow screen by screen and field by field together with the development team in order to find the simplest possible way of ordering a rental car. The work was documented with conceptual sketches, which was then described in text to ensure that no detail was lost. The solution then presented for all departments of Holiday autos and based on the feedback the solution was iterated several times before the final solution was finalized.
When the solution outlined on paper approved the Holiday Autos own web designer started the design, working on converting the conceptual sketches directly into graphic design. In this phase of the process I took on the role of assisting designer and evaluated the work from a usability perspective.
The new design was put together into an interactive prototype. Using the prototype of the new system a follow up usage test was conducted. This time using an eye tracking device. The test was conducted similar to the initial test, with the same number of users and similar test scenario.
The result was very satisfactory. In the initial test the average time the users needed to rent the car was 22 minutes. The uses was spending a lot of time trying to understand how the system worked, and as I explained above, a few of them also failed to complete the task of ordering their car. In the follow up test, however, the time was reduced to 7 minutes without any struggle for any of the testers.
The follow up test confirmed that the project goals were met. The obstacles preventing some users from ordering was removed, and the user experience drastically improved.
The new design will be implemented during the fall and the new interface will be released gradually. I’m looking forward to see the effect of this new interface will have, in terms of the business goals. Let me get back to you with some more examples of the updated design further along in the process.
/ Mårten
[...] Holiday auto is the world biggest rental car provider offering their service all around the world. I evalutated and redesign their site with the goal to make it more user friendly. After the redesign the time it took to rent a car was reduced to 60%. Read more about that project here. [...]