A Rental Marketplace Made for the Sharing Economy
Rentls- Peer to Peer Marketplace
OVERVIEW
Rentls is an up-and-coming startup that gives users the ability to make money while renting their stuff to others. Items on the platform range from flame throwers, to home improvement tools, to party supplies, to designer gowns, to games, electronics, movies, and more! Virtually anything and everything can be listed on Rentls to be rented.
Rentls hoped to capitalize on the current sharing economy by creating a platform that made it super easy for users to both list and rent items they owned.
Discovery
As with many of our projects, we kicked this project off with an in-depth interview with the key stakeholders. During our interview with them, we identified what their core values were, who their target audience was, defined some SMART goals, and kicked around ideas for how to make the application super easy to use.
After the discovery session, our creative team dove into conducting an analysis of available competitors. Using this as a catalyst, we created a mood board that summed up all the things that were working on the competitor’s sites, along with inspiration for colors, fonts, and imagery for the brand.
Through our discovery process, we were able to hone in on the priorities of the business, as well as which aesthetics we wanted to use for the new brand.
UX Strategy
When approaching the UX strategy for Rentls, we took our research and learnings and applied them to the overall strategy. We knew that the most important aspects for users would be: 1) the ability to easily find the item they’re looking for, 2) clearly understanding how the rental process works, and 3) quickly being able to list their own products or equipment for rent.
With a clear understanding of these priorities, we jumped into wireframe creation.
To aid users who are interested in listing their item, we structured the site to make the process as quick as possible. For those who are interested in renting an item, we outlined a flow that is just as simple. To help new users understand how Rentls works, we strategically included a concise summary of the process on the homepage and planned out dedicated pages for those who wanted to dive into more details.
Build
Once we established the structure of the site through wireframes, it was time to have fun applying our intentional styles to them. During the design phase, we applied the previously selected colors, fonts, and imagery styles to the site to give it a unique look and feel and set the stage for a strong brand.
The Rentls website was custom built on the .NET platform, making the entire website bloat-free. We did not use any plug-ins or modules for the site, giving us free reign on the design and development of features on each page. This allowed us to build the website exactly how Rentls wanted it, without restrictions.
Rentls selected Stripe as their payment processor, and we integrated it into the site to handle payments for the rental items. We also integrated with Stripe to split up the rental payments that came in so that part of the payment went to the people offering their things for rent, and Rentls would get the other part of the payment as their fees.
Test & Launch
When testing the website, we needed to make sure everything was working correctly. We made sure sign-ups and registrations for listings all ran smoothly, and that the location feature and listing search was slick. We tested the site on multiple devices to ensure mobile and tablet responsiveness, and prepped the site for launch.
Before going live, we ran through our extensive pre-launch checklist to make sure everything was in place for the launch. Once confirmed, we started the launch process, moved the site to the live server, pointed the domain, and it was live!
Closing Thoughts
Rentls now has a brand new website that will be the key to helping their business gain traction. With a fully functional web application that boasts a user-friendly design, it’s now easy for new customers to find and list any type of item on their website.
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