Budget Rent-A-Car

Budget Rent-A-Car's website had been around for quite a while when we started working with them. When Budget came to us, they presented us with two very unique challenges.

Firstly, they wanted us to improve the performance of their booking engine. On the surface this seemed like a straightforward user experience job.

In addition to that, they also wanted us to create an online brand guidelines document that set down all the rules that any page on any Budget site must follow.

Challenge No.1

Not only did we get the opportunity to exercise our usability skills, this challenge also required us to understand and work with lots of unfamiliar local rules and requirements to service the many regions they occupy worldwide. This was very enlightening. On top of this we had to work closely with a range of other companies providing specific support in the areas that keep the service up and running.

To begin with, we decided that we needed to get Budget and all the companies around the table in order to gain a detailed understanding of the many hurdles we were going to face.

Having gained a clear understanding, we developed wireframes based on early usability research. These were usability tested again and immediately we identified a notable improvement. During our design process we had to check our designs carefully to ensure they were able to deliver a rich experience as well as accommodate several language variations.

Once the final designs for each stage in the booking flow were complete we supported Budget's technical development partner in Germany to build the pages.

Early usability feedback was very positive so we're hopeful for a drastic performance increase once the designs have been live for a while.

Challenge No.2

With so many international offices it is important that a brand like Budget can effectively control their brand. To support them in this effort, we produced a brand definition guide for online that explains the exact details of all digital design elements.

Creating this document in conjunction with the design, ensured that all components were clearly explained but the overall scheme was not so restrictive that it would lead to regions breaking the rules to solve local issues.