Driving Discovery
Alamo
Role
Art Direction
UI/UX Design
Information Architecture
Development Oversight
Agency
WMX
Revitalizing Alamo Rent-a-Car with a fresh digital experience tailored for Chinese travelers coming to the U.S. and E.U. by inspiring adventure and positioning the brand as their top choice for vacationing.
Challenge
Alamo Rent-a-Car needed a bold refresh to modernize its look, update online offerings, and attract international travelers booking in key U.S. and E.U. markets.
Solution
A modernized Alamo destination guide with a fresh look, streamlined booking, and dynamic, localized content along with travel tips, made it the top choice for global travelers.
Say What?
Targeting Chinese travelers coming to the US and Europe, the first challenge was learning about Chinese writing systems as it pertains to fonts, and websites.
Luckily I was aware of a font system being developed by Google to be a universally usable font. It is called Noto (No Tofu — Tofu being this ““ ) and promises character availability and fast loading times on the web (Simplified Chinese has 8,105 characters, at 17MB).
We designed the site in English, and after client approval, had it translated to Simplified Chinese, which was the double-checked by native speakers for accuracy.
Reaching Far
The site started out catering to popular U.S. destinations based on Alamo’s rental data, making the rental process very easy, due to the redesigned booking funnel, destination specific copy and travel tips, as well as a section dedicated to drivers license registration for Chinese travelers to be able to drive a car in the U.S. with their Chinese paperwork.
Alamo was so pleased with the performance of the site, they asked for it to be updated to also include European destinations, which was done with a simple tab-toggle.
Planning
Alamo quickly was sold on the idea of making a destination guide, which basically highlights high conversion destinations and provides travel info and tips for them.
The site was a radical departure from their existing visual style, layouts were dynamic, typography was large, and cars and images were going to be the main focus.
In order to get sign off on this approach, wireframes were developed and sealed the deal.
