Summary
Full Transparency
Each DriveTime car has a Vehicle Details Page (VDP) where customers can view car specs and customize their terms to fit their budget. These tools for personalizing their financing are key to how our customers engage with the VDP and ultimately purchase a car. We wanted to surface some of those features a page earlier in the flow by giving starting terms on the Vehicle Search Results (VSR) page. Each vehicle-card would now display terms custom to each customer.
The VSR page has an average of 1.3 million visitors a month, and is where we try to lead customers after they’ve gone through the approval flow. “You’re approved — now shop cars!” Being able to make informed finance decisions from VSR would be a powerful addition to the tools we were giving customers.
Obstacles
Lifting Detail Page Views
We knew that space and visual hierarchy were going to be the main point of friction during the design process. Our VSR vehicle-cards display a lot of variable information in a small space, and we were about to display custom terms to each customer in that same area. There were also a handful of outlier views that had to be accounted for. All this new info didn’t just need to be squeezed in, but accentuated at the top of the visual hierarchy.
In order to emphasize this new info, other car details had to be de-emphasized. With that consideration, we listed and ranked all the info displayed on the cards to establish priority. The new terms and the cars’ year/make/model/trim would take the top spot, which is reflected in our final design.
Solutioning
Sneak Peeks
During competitor research we saw that other companies were finding a way to preview this type of financing feature while limiting access to it. Vehicle terms were often gated behind account creation.
We had some precedent for this on drivetime.com since terms only appear on the VDP for post-approval-flow customers. We wanted to create a similar “tease” of the feature on our pre-approval VSR to persuade customers to go through the approval flow. So we came up with a “locked” terms view, which suggested financing features on VSR that could be “unlocked” if the customer were to go through our approval flow.
This meant that we revamped our VSR cards pre- and post-approval.
Results
Impressive Impressions
This project became our experiment win of the year, with a big change in how our customers engage with the VSR. We saw people scrolling for more cards to view, and they were saving terms more often on those cars. These “saves” led to a lift in lead-to-sale with a more favorable mix of credit ratings among our customers.
