A brand new, comprehensive discounting system

The Problem: There was no real, cohesive discounting system on Zipcars that our members could see. We only had one-off promos, internal bundled pricing, and daily-only cars. As a result, to set any discount, the pricing team used a non-intuitive internal bundling tool that had a lot of workarounds. To market it, the only channel we had was email, which pretty much no ones sees. Separately, the business wanted to push longer trips more, as they are much more profitable. We needed a way to strategically set discounts on longer trips.

Solution: It was not enough to try to fix our bundling tool – we needed an entirely new tool to set discounts systematically and in a user friendly way. We also needed to promote and display discounts in-app.

Note: This page is best viewed on Desktop. It includes embedded Figma prototypes which may crash on mobile.

Designed at Zipcar.

Timeline: (from wire-framing to dev handoff)

• Phase 1: 5 weeks

• Phase 2: 6 weeks

Platforms: Midas (Internal pricing tool), Ultron (internal member services platform), iOS, Android, and Responsive web app

Team: Myself as lead designer, 1 design manager

Process

The most important part of this project was in Midas, internal tool – it’s where the Revenue Management would set the discounted pricing on longer trips. It was the base of the entire project, so I started on that first. We started calling the tool “Total price modifier”, since it’s essentially setting “modifiers” on the total prices of specific trips of a certain length. I used a wireframing design system on Figma that was amazingly useful, and based the design on Bootstrap 5 components. I was able to finish wireframes in 2 weeks, and hi-fi designs in another 2 weeks. For the sake of this project, I’ll be focusing on Member-facing wireframes, but Midas wireframes are available upon request.

App Wireframes

When I started on the app designs that members would see, I first researched discounting systems at other companies such as Turo, Kyte, Hopper. I examined several apps in the food delivery, hotel and shopping industry – industries that tend to have a lot of discounts. Then, I had help wireframing initial ideas, since I was working on another project at a time, and I finished the second half of the wireframes. Below are explorations of the Search and Book flow with discounts, and Extend Trip.

Note: For us, it made sense to complete App designs before the Web app, since App would inform Web. Then, with Web later on, it was easier to jump into high-fidelity designs.

Final Design – Mobile App

After wire-framing, I moved on to hi-fi designs and explored all the flows in more detail. Here, we made many micro decisions on things such as placement of banners, color usage, illustration/icon usage, and differences between the web and mobile app (there are some key differences influenced by their respective layouts). Below, you can see a prototype of the final in-app designs.

To see a few design decisions made along the process, see the full project presentation.

Final Design – Web App

Below, you can see a preview of the final web app designs. The flow shown is Search and book for non-members (an unauthenticated state). Not pictured is Member search and some other related flows I designed. Full designs can be shown by request.

As part of these projects, I added a number of new components to our design system – focusing on all the messaging components. I created each with autolayout capabilities, documentation, and guidelines on how to use.

• Message Card (4 variations – Discount, Daily only, Gas included, Electric car)

• Web Car Card

• Info Banner (Ex: Discount available banner)

• Marketing Banner (Dismissable, used with a marketing message)

Impact

The company profits much more on longer trips, because of the dollar value it brings as well as less turnover of members in each car. Just like with Airbnb, with less turnover, there’s less chance of damage. (Or even worse, crime, etc...) TLDR; we hope to incentivize more longer rides which will also incrementally improve each next trip.

On the financial side, this project is projected to increase our annualized EBITDA by $2.7 mil. (Assumptions: 3.5% multiday conversion increase, 0.5 hourly reservation duration increase). Phase 1 of the project has launched, and has seen an average of 44% conversion rate of trip extension, as well as $522k in revenue in the first 2 weeks of launch.

The engineering team is in the process of developing Phase 2, and we are excited to see the positive impact it’ll have on our members and business!