HelloCars

While Australians are prolific online shoppers, the idea of purchasing a car online is still unfamiliar territory for consumers. Allowing a customer to purchase a car exclusively online sight-unseen poses a unique challenge. The website must take on the role of the salesperson by first educating the customer and then facilitating the entire transaction without any human intervention.

HelloCars recently undertook a project to rebuild the online vehicle checkout experience focusing on several key areas: trust, transparency, usability and functionality. HelloCars spoke to each customer that either successfully and unsuccessfully purchased a vehicle online through HelloCars to understand their hesitations and frustrations throughout the process. Uncertainty was by far the most common feedback with customers either not understanding or not trusting the process.

While the existing HelloCars checkout process performed well from a functional perspective, it lacked an emotional connection to assure the customer that the process was proven to be trustworthy and offered an entirely risk-free solution. The introduction of social proof become a prominent theme of the design, introducing potential customers to online reviews, feedback and testimonials from existing HelloCars customers.

Buying a car is a notoriously stressful process with many traditional dealerships employing high-pressure sales tactics to trap customers in a purchase. As a world-first, HelloCars has taken components of the car purchase process and translated this into a simple, online checkout experience. Vehicle registration, extended warranty, optional accessories, finance, vehicle trade-in and more are all seamlessly integrated into one convenient online checkout. These components of the car purchase process have traditionally been exploited by dealerships to blur the true cost of the vehicle, while HelloCars presents this information in a clear and straightforward manner while at the same time affording customers the time to perform their own research before buying.