Thrifty Car Rental is an international auto rental franchise
company with more than 85,000 cars at more than 1,300 locations in
58 countries around the globe. It depends on its internet site, www.thrifty.com, for a large and
growing segment of its car-reservations business.
When Thrifty's Internet Marketing group decided to improve the
site, they turned to StoneHenge Partners.
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Thrifty.com before |
The problem
Thrifty's site allowed customers to get rental quotes and book
cars online. It also exposed customers to Thrifty's other services,
such as express checkout, frequent-traveler rewards, and used car
sales. The site had two major weaknesses:
- Clutter. The reservation function was lost in the clamor of
Thrifty's other functions, even though site traffic patterns showed
80 percent of customers were there to get rates and book cars.
- Fog. The reservation function suffered from poor usability
design, including vague instructions, disorganized layout and
distracting graphics.
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Thrifty.com after |
The solution
StoneHenge Partners worked in partnership with Thrifty Internet
Marketing on a two-phase redesign of the site.
- Phase 1: We redesigned the site navigation system to open up
more space for content, clarify navigation, reduce page weight, and
enhance Thrifty's brand identity. Then we moved the first step of
the reservation function to the home page, bringing potential
customers one click closer to their goal.
- Phase 2: We conducted usability testing of the five-step
reservation function to pinpoint stumbling blocks from a customer's
point of view. Then we optimized instructions, graphics and layout
to address those problems in a way that did not require
cost-prohibitive code changes to Thrifty's mainframe reservations
engine.
The result
Before the redesign, www.Thrifty.com had been averaging 800-900
reservations a day. After the redesign, online business more than
doubled, setting an all-time daily record of 2,190 reservations
less than a month after relaunch. Why?
- Fewer bailouts. Through better usability, more users found the
reservation function and a larger percentage of them completed
it.
- Faster pages. Lightweight graphics and intelligent use of
stylesheets meant page load time dropped by several seconds per
page.
Building on that success, Thrifty later called on StoneHenge
Partners to redesign its franchisee extranet, employee convention
site, and used-car sales conference site.