Project Summary

Cars on Demand hired my team to diagnose the problem with their service and increase conversion rates. The client says their primary customer, Executive Assistants, are "delighted" by the end-to-end experience but they're losing traction in the market.

Research found that the current ‘brochure’ site to generate a new lead is overwhelming to the time-poor Executive Assistant (EA). The product is great, once you experience it, but there's a problem at the start of the purchase funnel: people find the service difficult to assess. By redesigning the homepage, the average time for an EA to understand the value proposition changed from 2m 34s to under 15 seconds.

Introduction

Cars on Demand are a premium chauffeur service with a cutting edge SaaS product that streamlines the end-to-end experience. Executive Assistants bring in a significant amount of business because they often manage many executives and they’re key decision-makers when it comes to travel.

Their goal is to increase the conversion rate. They’ve hired branding and marketing agencies to do so, but it’s only resulted in increased traffic to the website.

Let’s see what our UX process can do!

Phase — 1
Explore

How did we diagnose the problem?

How did we diagnose the problem?

We began by conducting a competitor analysis to answer the main question:

Why do EAs engage with other chauffeur services?

We found Cars on Demand have a very competitive product. They’re able to compete with the most luxurious competitor but at a cheaper price point.

However, it’s uncertain these features are what Executive Assistants look for in a chauffeur, which begs the question…

What do EAs look for in a chauffeur and why aren’t people using Cars on Demand?

We conducted 11 user interviews with Executive Assistants (4 customers and 7 non-customers) to understand their role, what they value and what gives them grief.

What do Executive Assistants value in a chauffeur service?
What makes them loyal to a service?
What do they consider important when arranging transportation?

What is their current experience of using Cars on Demand?
What is their experience of the end-to-end process?

How do EAs do their job efficiently?
What does a day in their life look like?
What gives them peace of mind when managing an executive?

Phase — 2

Key Insights

1. There are 5 key considerations both non-customers and customers value in service. All of which, Cars on Demand provide, as validated by their current customers. These 5 pieces of key information are important to communicate to the EA.

2. Time is their enemy.

EAs are extremely time-sensitive! Their role is to give the executive they assist time, which means they have to optimise their own time. The features and services they value centre around how it saves them time.

While we identified a steep learning curve with the SaaS product, for the most part, people said it was a fantastic product. Current customers are “delighted” by the product!

So, let’s look under the hood and see what’s going on.

Well there’s your problem

Digging into Google Analytics we found a 66% bounce rate. 30-50% is good for this industry and anything higher is a concern.

?

A bounce rate is the percentage of visitors that arrive at a page and then leave without exploring. They don’t click a link, get a quote or make a purchase.

A high bounce rate suggests:

1. The visitor didn’t find what they were looking for OR

2. The webpage is difficult to use.

This led us to a heuristic evaluation on the website, which validates the high bounce rate.

Heuristic evaluation on current site

🔗 Abby’s Information Architecture heuristics are perfect to evaluate Cars on Demand. Our research so far has led us to believe there is a problem around how the user understand where they are, what they’ve found, what’s around, and what to expect.

We chose three principles:

Findable: Able to be located
Clear: Easily Perceptible
Learnable: To fix in the mind, in the memory

What we found from the evaluation is:

An overwhelming amount of information, which overlaps throughout the website, and a crowded navigation bar. Less is more! Information competes with each other which makes the relevant content confusing and to the Executive Assistant.

It’s a huge brochure for the Executive Assistant to flick through, so to speak. It should take 🔗 15 seconds for someone to understand the value proposition of a website.

And time matters to an Executive Assistant.

Define
Let’s look at the Executive Assistant

Carmen constantly needs to be thinking ahead and values efficiency so that she can save time for the executive she assists. She needs the tools around her to be reliable, simple and easy to use for her job.

What’s important to her

• Being one step ahead

• Saving time

• Reliable service

She wants...

• to remove roadblocks for her executive and get them from A to B on time. 

• clarity & transparency to make informed decisions.

• to find key information to decide whether to use the service or not.

Her journey with Cars on Demand

Scenario: The executive has an interstate meeting and Carmen needs to arrange transportation that will get him there on time.

What part of her journey to focus on?

Our hypothesis is Cars on Demand is a diamond in the rough. They provide a great service but people aren’t engaged. If they were conversion and loyalty will follow.

The solution

How might we help Carmen build confidence in deciding to use the service?

How might we make key information easily accessible for Carmen?

Why?

1. The home page is the start of Carmen’s journey in getting to know Cars on Demand and the service they provide.

2. Google Analytics show a bounce rate of 66% from the home page and we don’t want Carmen to be part of that.

3. The heuristic evaluation highlights existing problems on the website.

The redesign

New home page

Existing home page

How did we get there?
Evaluating the existing home page with users

• Average time to understand what the company does: 2min 34secs.

• Initial impression was that this is just for airport transfers and not targeted toward corporate.

3/5 think the hierarchy is unintuitive

“The information is not organised in my opinion, I just can’t predict what is coming up next to understand the service”

‌‌4/5 people had trouble scanning the content

“Should be much easier to read — there’s too much information. I just want to scan, not read.”

“I thought it was just an airport transfer, but after reading the ‘Trusted by’ information and ‘The CoD Experience’ I realised they provide ground transportations.

5/5 people think the value proposition is unclear

“The most important information is found in the fourth or fifth scroll, it should be at the top”

What changes should we make?

The usability test validated our heuristic evaluation and journey map. There is a close correlation between the three research methods so we’re confident we’re on the right track.

How do we use this information?

1. Prioritise content: Restructure the hierarchy of content by importance.

2. Wording: Ensure word choices are clear and easy to understand.

3. Scannable information: Reduce the overload of information to make key information accessible.

Phase — 4

Usability Test with the redesigned home page

We conducted two rounds of A/B testing with 10 people between two different home pages. Two layouts were tested to figure out which layout would help Carmen flow through the purchase funnel. This kept us focused on building a data-driven product that Carmen will love.

The new home page

• Clearly stated the value proposition which brought the average time for a user to understand the company to 14 seconds.

• Easy access to links specific for executive assistants and business travellers.‌

• Key information moved to the top so it’s easier to find.

• People like the instant quote. However, we moved it down so that Cars on Demand can first pitch their value before funnelling you through to conversion.

• 4/5 trusted the Google reviews, but didn’t trust the customer testimonials since they look hand-picked — so we removed it!

What are people saying about the redesign?

“I am already expecting a safe service so this is connected with the chauffeur word. I am already expecting a super professional service and I am sure it will be safe anyways.”

“I like how simplified the copy is. It tells you exactly what it is.”

A lot of the original information is still there but it’s redesigned to be succinct. It’s stripped back so that it doesn’t feel overwhelming and makes it easier for Carmen to find key information about the service.

Understanding the value proposition in 14s is quite different from 2m34s! By removing the roadblock to Carmen evaluating the service, we’ve moved her further down the purchase funnel to conversion.