Avis Budget looks to boost online experience

Avis Budget, the car rental group, is poised to deploy tools from online optimisation company Maxymiser to help it improve the online customer experience across its websites for Europe and the Middle East.

Avis wants to increase the number of bookings, improve the overall experience and enhance customer retention.

Maxymiser’s offer includes online testing, personalisation and multichannel optimisation. Avis will initially use A/B and multivariate testing across the four stages of its reservation process to identify the variants of content, placement and design that drive the greatest number of bookings.

Initial testing will take place on the French website and will then be rolled out across five other territories by the end of the year.

Avis’ customer retention strategy will also see the car rental company using software that helps the company to identify and target different types of website visitor, such as returning customers or first-time bookers, and automatically display the content they are likely to find most compelling.

Further into the project, Avis also plans to use a platform that can test different experiences for mobile visitors.

Deploying the testing services is simple for Avis, with just a one-time change required that adds a single line of javascript to the website.

Ben Stephenson, echannel development manager for Avis Budget EMEA, said: “It is hard to truly understand the customer’s perspective and take an objective view on the experience delivered by the Avis site. By working with Maxymiser we can become a customer experience-focused company, constantly listening to our customers through their actions in real time and making changes based on the way they behave on our site.”

“Wayne Morris, UK general manager of Maxymiser, said: “Taking the subjectivity out of decision-making by using data derived from actual live visitors to your site is critical to putting the customer at the heart of website optimisation. A/B and multivariate testing can provide critical insights to inform the business.”