Tinoleggio is a car rental broker: one search across dozens of suppliers, worldwide. I redesigned every screen of the booking funnel (search, results, vehicle detail, checkout), treating each touchpoint as a place where a booking is either won or quietly lost.
Comparison booking has a structural problem: the product being compared isn't really the car. Two suppliers can list the same Fiat Panda at the same daily rate and deliver completely different experiences: one takes a €700 hold on a credit card you may not own, one accepts a debit card, one demands the deposit at the desk after you've landed.
That gap is where car rental loses people. The classic industry response is to hide it: show the lowest possible headline price, reveal the conditions as late as legally possible, and hope the sunk cost of the funnel carries the booking through. It converts in the short term and produces refunds, one-star reviews, and customers who never come back.
I took the opposite position: surface the real cost early and make it filterable. The bet is that a user who knows the deposit at the results stage books with more confidence than one who discovers it at checkout, and that fewer abandoned carts downstream is worth more than a slightly lower click-through upstream.
The entry point strips the search to the decisions that actually change results (pickup country and location, dates, different drop-off, driver age), with the supplier logos sitting alongside it as the first trust signal, before any price is shown. Verified Trustpilot reviews sit directly under the search box rather than buried in a footer.
Driver age is a checkbox on the search itself (“driver aged 25–75”), because age surcharges are one of the most common sources of price surprise at the desk. Asking upfront means the results shown are the results that apply to you.
Searching across 250+ offers takes real time. Instead of a spinner, the wait shows the supplier logos being checked one by one, each getting a green tick as its inventory comes back. The wait becomes evidence of thoroughness: the user isn't watching a loader, they're watching the product do the work they came for, and arrives at the results page already primed on how much ground was covered.
€700, stated at results level, next to the price. Not at checkout, not in the terms.
Not owning a credit card is one of the single biggest blockers in car rental. Making it a one-click filter turns a dealbreaker discovered at the desk into a search parameter.
Bank debit, prepaid, cash: unavailable options are greyed rather than hidden, so the user learns what's possible.
A histogram shows where offers actually cluster, with the average stated in words (“il prezzo medio è di 118 €” / “the average price is €118”). The user can see whether they're hunting a bargain or an outlier instead of dragging a handle blind.
At equal price, the supplier is the product.
“Mini da 10,76 €” (“Mini from €10.76”) lets people navigate by budget before they navigate by car.
“Da pagare ora” (“to pay now”) and “Da pagare al ritiro della vettura: 0,00 €” (“to pay at pickup: €0.00”) stated separately. The second line is the important one: it closes off the fear of an unknown charge at the desk.
A date and a time, in a dedicated banner, not a link to terms.
Including that it's refundable and which card circuits can handle it.
Surfaced under the price, for a category where the deposit already ties up cash.
For people who don't book on the first visit: instead of losing them, capture them.
Base coverage as a neutral button, full protection as the primary. The upsell is present and clearly the recommended path, but the cheaper option is a real, clickable choice rather than a dark pattern.
This is a self-directed redesign, not a shipped engagement. I picked a real, existing product and rebuilt the funnel I thought was leaving bookings on the table. I don't have Tinoleggio's real conversion data, so I won't pretend to.
If it went live, here's what I'd be watching: completion rate at each funnel step (search → results → detail → checkout), how showing the deposit at results stage changes abandonment at checkout, and support volume tied to surprise charges at pickup: the exact cost this redesign tries to eliminate.