Providing borrowers with more pricing certainty within the booking funnel.
How pricing works with Uber Carshare
With traditional car rental companies, borrowers usually pay a flat daily fee that includes unlimited kilometres, and they’re responsible for refuelling the car at their own expense at the end of the trip.
Uber Carshare takes a different approach. Pricing is split into two parts:
Pre-trip costs which are paid at checkout when the booking is made, and
Post-trip costs which are calculated and charged after the trip ends.
User testing and feedback on the existing pricing structure
User testing revealed friction points around how borrowers interpreted trip pricing. The main issue stemmed from how pricing was displayed when no dates were applied - this was referred to as the “from” pricing.
In these cases, the “from” price often misled borrowers into thinking, for example, that hiring the Hyundai Kona shown below cost only $8 for one hour or $29 for an entire day, inclusive of all fees.
However, all trips also incur a booking fee and mandatory Basic Cover, typically calculated at around 10% of the time cost.
When these additional costs are factored in:
A 1-hour hire increases from the advertised $8.00 to $15.79 (+97%)
A 1-day hire increases from the advertised $29.00 to $38.89 (+34%)
Through interviews - primarily with users who had never borrowed a car on Uber Carshare - the feedback was consistently negative, particularly regarding how pricing is displayed when no dates are applied.
What happens when dates are applied to a search?
When trip dates are entered, the displayed price is all-inclusive, covering:
Time costs
Booking fee
Basic Cover
With the same group of users, I asked them to compare the search experience with and without dates applied. Overall, they found the process of applying dates familiar, the pricing clearer, and ultimately felt more confident proceeding with a booking.
If pricing lacks transparency without dates applied, how might we encourage users to apply dates to every search?
Exploring options to ensure dates are applied to all searches
The most straightforward solution was to remove the option for borrowers to search without dates. I also proposed refinements such as rounding prices to the nearest dollar and removing the “incl. fuel and fees” label to reduce cognitive load.
Based on user data, 75% of borrowers were already searching with dates applied, making this approach a relatively low-risk solution.
Additionally, removing the option to skip dates would create a more linear flow from search to checkout.a
Internal stakeholders raised feedback that removing the ability to “skip dates” would represent a significant departure from the Uber Carshare search experience, as this option had been available for the past 10 years.
I explored an alternative that would retain the “skip dates” option while applying a 3-hour hire period based on each car’s next availability. The 3-hour duration was chosen based on user data indicating typical trip lengths, and the concept was inspired by Airbnb’s approach, where a trip period is applied to all search results even if users do not enter specific dates.
After discussing this concept with engineering, concerns were raised about the significant effort required to implement it. Consequently, the solution was simplified: if a borrower chooses to skip applying dates and times, a blanket 3-hour hire period would apply, without factoring in each car’s individual availability.
How did users respond to the search options?
New and existing borrowers were recruited for moderated user testing and presented with high-fidelity prototypes for each option:
Mandatory dates: Users must enter dates and times to progress their search.
Skip dates: Users can skip entering dates; however, a 3-hour period is still applied.
During user testing, the majority of users experienced pain points with the skip dates option. When asked which version they preferred, users overwhelmingly chose the mandatory dates version, citing that it gave them more control over the search parameters and caused less confusion compared with the skip dates option.
What was the final result?
Based on user preference for the mandatory dates option, the decision was made to proceed with this approach. Additional changes in the final release included rounding prices up to the nearest dollar and removing the copy “incl. fuel and fees” to provide greater clarity.
On the desktop homepage, further adjustments were made to simplify the search funnel, such as removing the search banner from the web header. This change ensured that all users must start a search through the main CTA and apply dates and times to progress. Additional UI updates were also made to better align the desktop experience with Uber’s branding.
As of June 2024, all borrowers across Uber Carshare app and web are now required to enter dates and times in order to progress through the search funnel. Due to this simplified and streamlined search process, conversion has also increased by 4.7% on app, and 1.3% on web.