5 Must-Have Features in an Online Car Rental Platform

Online car rental is in high demand in the travel industry. Instead of relying on public transport, travelers prefer rented vehicles, especially for short-distance travel. It helps them save time and explore more places. Initially, such businesses mainly operated online. But now, car owners are listing their vehicles online to facilitate smooth and early booking.

The online car rental market is highly competitive. There are many important factors for survival in this market. One of them is ‘features’. In this article, we are going to discuss the features an online car rental platform must have.

5 Essential Features in a Car Rental Platform

1. Multi-Vendor Support

Supporting only one vendor isn’t advised these days. The biggest disadvantage of limiting your car rental platform to a single vendor is a limited selection of cars. Also, if there are many cars, a single vendor may not handle operations smoothly. Therefore, allowing multiple vendors on your car rental platform and working as ‘classifieds’ is recommended.

Advantages of building a multi-vendor car platform:

• Possibility for a wide range of vehicles, including options like color, fuel preferences, seating capacity, size, etc.

• Earning opportunities for many vehicle owners.

• Smooth operations for car owners as well as consumers.

• Since various car owners can list their vehicles on your platform, you may not have to invest excessively to list your vehicles.

2. Vehicle Details

Most car rental Figma UI kits include and highlight the vehicle details page, which shows the importance of this feature. Customers would like to know all the important information about the vehicle they are going to rent because they are paying for it. So, showing just images of a vehicle may not be enough. Car owners should display details of a vehicle on a single page. So, include every information such as compatible fuel, capacity, mileage, connectivity options, odometer reading, permissible distance, rent amount, etc on the product details page. If you’re serving as classifieds, make all important information mandatory for approval. 

Benefits of mentioning vehicle details properly:

• Better transparency between car owners and consumers.

• Customers can filter their vehicle choices based on specifications, features, and budget preferences.

• Vehicle owners can have a dedicated page to display their vehicles; this can also help them explain them more clearly.

• With a dedicated vehicle details page, booking feels more accurate and interactive.

3. Search Option with Filters

Multiple vehicle options can result in many web pages or a single page that requires excessive scrolling. This way, finding an ideal vehicle becomes too hard for consumers, and sometimes, the preferred vehicle gets ignored even if it's present. Also, vehicles are subject to availability. Without filters, consumers may sometimes see unavailable vehicles. Therefore, a search option with necessary filters is quite important for online car rental platforms. This allows consumers to find vehicles based on location, fuel, and duration preferences.

Advantages of offering the search option with filters in your car rental platform:

• More clarity in the car rental booking flow.

• Consumers can find nearly accurate vehicles that closely match their preferences.

• Booking becomes more user-friendly as options are reduced and all of them are shown based on the consumer’s preferences.

• Conversions may increase as consumers can easily find their vehicles.

4. Smooth and Versatile Payments

Keeping your checkout system smooth is quite important. Before you take your platform live, you must check whether the payment processing is working fine. A smooth and error-free payment flow ensures that consumers can trust your platform and complete the purchase. A flawed payment system may lead to abandoned purchases.

Also, you must offer multiple payment options. Offering a single payment option will serve customers who rely on the same method. Supporting multiple methods will open doors for more consumers.

If you are building an online car rental platform using a Figma UI kit or a website template, then you must check if it features a web page or interface with a clear payment flow.

Advantages of smooth and versatile payment options on an online car rental platform:

• If there are many payment options, more consumers can feel considered and benefit from your services.

• A smooth payment flow ensures more complete purchases and fewer abandoned ones.

• A built-in or integrated payment system feels more trustworthy to consumers. That’s why you should integrate payment gateways into your platform rather than manually request payments.

• A built-in payment system reduces clutter and makes the car booking process user-friendly.

5. Account Management

Consumers visiting your platform must create an account. This may look slightly boring at first. But this can marginally improve their experience. If your car rental platform doesn’t have account management features, booking may not seem as flawless as it should be. Resuming bookings after leaving a platform can be impossible. Also, finding the same vehicle for the consumers, which they viewed earlier, can be quite tough.

Advantages of offering account management on an online car rental platform:

• Possibility for a smoother vehicle booking experience.

• Consumers can save their favorite vehicles for later. They won’t have to find it in a long list of vehicles later, after logging in again.

• You can send push notifications to consumers based on their account history on your platform.

• Booking history, payment history, etc, can be sorted in one place, better for consumers’ reference and accounting.

Things to Consider Before You Build an Online Car Rental Platform

• Both mobile and desktop users can browse your platform to book a website. So, try to serve them via a website as well as an app. A website will help you gain visitors, while an app will help you retain users. Get a car rental website and app UI kit combo for quick platform development.

• Define supported locations for your car rental platform. Clearly mention whether it is supported for a particular city, state, region, or country to avoid confusion.

• As discussed above, build a classified platform to earn more with a limited investment.

• Market your business among car owners as well as travelers to ensure long-term success for your online car rental platform.