Avis · Search-to-Keys Booking UX

Avis booking,
reimagined end to end

An interactive concept redesign of the Avis rental journey — live fleet search, a friction-light booking & extras flow, and a post-booking dashboard with digital check-in on web and a native mobile screen. Each decision is framed against the customer pain it removes and the metric it moves, and the CRO section ends in a shipping decision — not just two headlines.

Clickable prototype Problem → decision → metric CRO test with read-out Native mobile screen Web & app

01

Search & fleet results

Pickup details stay pinned up top; every class shows real-time, all-in pricing — no digging for the total.

The problem I'm solving
Friction today

On most rental sites the daily rate is the hook, but taxes, fees, and location surcharges only surface two or three steps later. Searchers arriving from comparison sites feel baited, bounce back, and re-sort — a measurable drop-off right at the top of the funnel.

Decision I made

Every class card commits to an all-in total up front, next to the daily rate, with free-cancellation stated inline. The filter chips re-rank without a page reload so comparison happens in place, not across tabs.

Metric this moves: search-to-book conversion. Removing the price surprise at the results stage is the cheapest place in the funnel to recover an abandoning searcher.
Constraint: live pricing needs a fast quote API — cards render skeletons, not spinners, so perceived latency stays low. Reuse: the price/total component is shared with step 02 so one pricing source of truth feeds the whole flow.
rental.avis.com/search
Premium black Toyota Corolla studio image for Avis economy rental card
Economy
Toyota Corolla or similar
5 seats 2 bags Auto
$31/day
$93 total
Free cancellation
Premium black Jeep Compass studio image for Avis standard SUV rental card
Standard SUV
Jeep Compass or similar
5 seats 4 bags Auto
$54/day
$162 total
Free cancellation
Premium black Tesla Model 3 studio image for Avis electric rental card
Electric
Tesla Model 3 or similar
5 seats 2 bags 272mi range
$68/day
$204 total
Free cancellation
02

Book & extras

Add-ons are opt-in with the price attached to each one — the total updates live, so there's nothing new at the counter.

The problem I'm solving
Friction today

Extras are where trust breaks. Pre-checked coverage, vague "protection" bundles, and totals that only reconcile at the counter turn a confident booking into a defensive one. Renters either over-pay to be safe or arrive braced for a fight over the bill.

Decision I made

Each add-on is opt-in, priced individually, and worded plainly. The order summary itemizes vehicle, extras, and taxes separately and recomputes the moment anything changes, so the number on this screen is the number at pickup.

Metric this moves: add-on attach rate and post-rental trust. Transparent per-item pricing tends to lift genuinely-wanted extras while cutting the surprise-driven disputes that damage repeat booking.
Constraint: per-day vs flat-fee extras compute differently — the summary logic keys off a per-item flag rather than hard-coding each line. Tradeoff: defaulting coverage on lifts attach rate but erodes trust — I default it off and let the value carry it.
rental.avis.com/reserve/extras
Selected premium rental vehicle preview
Economy
Toyota Corolla or similar · 3 nights
+$14/day
+$29/day
+$65
+$12/day

Order summary

Vehicle (3 days)$93.00
Extras$87.00
Taxes & fees (est.)$19.80
Total$199.80
03

My Trips & digital check-in

Manage, modify, or skip the counter entirely — everything a returning renter needs on one screen. The brief calls out web and mobile app, so this journey is designed on both.

The problem I'm solving
Friction today

The counter is the last, worst step: a line after a flight, forms already filled online, an upsell while you're tired and just want keys. It's the moment most likely to sour an otherwise fine trip — and the hardest to fix with visual design alone.

Decision I made

Post-booking lives on one screen, and the highest-value action — skipping the counter with a digital key — is a single toggle. Modify and cancel are inline with an undo, so a mistake is recoverable without a phone call.

Metric this moves: counter-skip adoption and post-trip satisfaction (CSAT/NPS). Every renter who takes the digital key is one fewer person in a line and one fewer counter upsell dispute.
Mobile-first: the digital key is a phone action by nature — designed as a native app screen, not a shrunk desktop page. Constraint: digital key depends on location + identity verification, so it's shown as a state that becomes ready, not an always-on button.
rental.avis.com/mytrips
CONFIRMATION · AVIS-48213-JR

Standard SUV · Jeep Compass or similar

Confirmed
Newark Liberty Int'l (EWR) · Jul 6 – Jul 9
Pickup 10:00 AM · Return 10:00 AM, same location
Skip the counter
Digital key ready 15 min before pickup
Adjust trip length — extras and total from step 02 will recalculate on your next visit to Reserve.
3 nights
Reservation canceled. Undo
04

CRO variant test

Two hero headlines built to test what actually moves search-to-book conversion — price-first vs. trust-first.

Variant A

Rent smarter.
From $31/day.

Hypothesis: leading with price shortens the decision for price-sensitive searchers arriving from comparison sites.
Variant B

80 years of getting
you there. On time.

Hypothesis: leading with trust lifts conversion for repeat renters and loyalty members who already know the price is fair.
Test read-out — 14 days, ~50/50 split
Illustrative / simulated
A real experiment ends in a decision, not a hunch — so here's how I'd read a result and what I'd ship. Numbers below are fabricated to demonstrate the analysis, not live data.
Search → book
+8.3%
Variant A vs. control
Loyalty-member book
+11.6%
Variant B vs. control
Add-on attach rate
+4.1%
itemized extras
Counter-skip adoption
37%
chose digital key
Search-to-book conversion by variant
Control 6.4%
Variant A 6.9%
Variant B 7.1%
What I'd ship: Variant B wins overall and wins decisively with logged-in loyalty members, so it becomes the default. But Variant A's price-first framing beats it for new traffic from comparison sites — so the real answer isn't A-or-B, it's segment the hero by audience: trust-first for returning members, price-first for cold comparison traffic. That's the follow-up test I'd queue next.

1

Decisions, not decoration. Every screen names the customer pain it removes and the metric it moves — conversion, attach rate, counter-skip adoption. This is the user-centered, data-driven thinking the brief asks for, made explicit instead of implied.

2

One connected journey, not three screens. Search, booking, and post-booking share the same component language and one pricing source of truth — the end-to-end product design the role calls for, from search through post-booking on web and mobile.

3

A CRO conversation that reaches a conclusion. The variant test doesn't stop at two hypotheses — it reads out a result and lands on a shipping decision (segment the hero by audience), which is exactly how I'd partner with a product/CRO team on experimentation.

4

Designed with the build in mind. Coming from a CS background, I flag the real constraints alongside the ideal — quote-API latency, per-day vs flat-fee pricing logic, shared components — so design and engineering start aligned rather than negotiating at handoff.


Christian B. Carballido
UX/UI & e-commerce · Pine Brook Digital

Independent concept demo, not affiliated with or endorsed by Avis Budget Group or Avis Rent A Car System, LLC. Company name and brand color are shown only to illustrate a realistic redesign concept; the wordmark shown is custom typography, not the official logo. Pricing, reservations, trip details, and all test read-out metrics are fictional and illustrative — used to demonstrate design reasoning, not to represent real performance data. Vehicle photography via Wikimedia Commons contributors, used under Creative Commons license.