UX Practice: Revising website for car rental

It’s been a while that I didn’t do the UX practice so this time I pick a website that I have no knowledge about it as an exercise, RentConnected.com for car rental.

Of course, I’m not their target group as I can’t drive and have no intention to rent a car. Still, there’s a method called “Extreme user interview” (As I found from IDEO’s Method cards) stated that interviewing person who’s extremely familiar or completely unfamiliar with the product could help inspire new ideas. Let’s see how far could I go ;)

Homepage

A standard website I’d say, catchy main image, standard navigation bar, and a little glimpse of bottom part to notify user there’s more content to scroll.

In my opinion, I think there’re 3 points that I can suggest for fixing:

1. Main action panel. Its single line seems confusing due to many fields required and also make this panel not stand out enough from the background.
2. Promotion tab isn’t highlighted enough as it should be to attract user on their first purchase.
3. Line icon on the bottom right, the developer might try to emphasize by adding lots of shadows behind. But I think it looks dull rather than attracting.

And here’s the result after my adjustment:

Business image created by Nensuria — Freepik.com

Sorry if the image isn’t clear enough, I’m too lazy to find a better one lol

1. For the main action panel, I grouped date&time together with a location for both Pick up and Drop off. The grouping makes the panel more noticeable due to its size and the input function also make more sense. I moved text header to the CTA button to clarify the main action and also remove filter option as it’s too complicated for the first interaction.
2. For navigation bar, I rearranged the “Promotion” to be on the leftmost and add some red notification to attract user’s click. This notification could be used as an identifier for a new promotion that user hasn’t seen yet. For “Language” button, both text and flags should be a bit closer so user can see them as the same action. I also remove “Contact us” button because I think all contact points could be emphasized and displayed in full-width along with other content on the website rather than hidden inside one button.
3. For Line floating button, I removed dull shadow (still little shadow left for layers looking) and reshaped it to a bigger circle for better eye-catching.

Another point I’d like to add is that when I click on “Pick up location” field, it shows nothing but “Choose on map” hyperlink. Since the car rental system has a fixed location, I think it’s better to display suggested location list so user can have more idea of what could they do for location selection. For examples, if this rental site mainly focuses on tourist customers, list of airport or bus terminal could help them browse more easily.

Search page

Another standard design, the search bar on top is good as well as filter option on the left sidebar. Still, I have lots of issues to talk about on this page lol

1. Checkbox: I’m not quite sure why they put it on the right side of the text instead of on the left which is the usual way. Also clicking on that little checkbox is bothersome.
2. Car type filter: the blue stroke isn’t highlighted enough. When I first tried playing on the site, I searched for the small car then decide to change to a medium car instead. Turned out these filter can be multiply selected and I haven't noticed at all. Adjusting opacity could help to solve this issue.
3. The icon under car’s title: I know that person icon means how many people could sit in the car but I have no idea what are the suitcase and shopping bag icon is. I tried hover on the icon — no description, I tried checking inside product’s detail page — no description. Okay.
4. Price text: The blue and red text highlight the price per day which is good but I have no idea why they repeated the same text below. After wandering around for a bit, turned out it’s a total cost in case of many days booking. The text is still confusing though, I’d suggest to fix word to something like “Total THB 4,000 for 2 days” and also remove the text when user searches for a single day.

So, my main fix is on the filter sidebar and here’s the result:

For the insurance options, I think it’s easier to highlight the selected option since user is allowed to select only one option. Also, both insurance and deposit option should be toggle easily when user clicks on any part of the description text.

And that’s all of the exercise! Hope you enjoy reading it and feel free to add comment or suggestion :D