Business

I hired a professional usability tester to make a booking and give feedback. I asked 3 simple questions.

1.Were you able to book and cancel without any issue?

2. If this wasn’t a test, would you have made a purchase? Why or why not?

3. What could have been improved upon?

Here are the results…

(1) Were you able to book and cancel without any issue?

Step 1

very straight forward there was no confusion on what to do. I have inputted my details and searched

Step 2

I would like to be able to sort and filter the results by car brand, if I felt more comfortable driving a particular car for example.

Also a rating from previous users would be very helpful, and maybe a ‘top pick’ from the website which could tell me which is the most fuel economic car (seeing as fuel is one of the most expensive outlay to renting a car)

I like the fact when I hover over the fields I am shown an example of the car.

The sorting by price is very quick and responsive.

I have sorted the result by price and chosen the cheapest rental option

Step 3

everything here is straight forward, the only thing I would like to see on the page is maybe the price in my home country currency, also there is no mention of the next process in terms of paying, i’ve never booked a rental car before so im unsure how and who i pay?? So i would like some information regarding that before i booked

Cancelling

I have booked the car and will now go to my bookings page as this is where I think I would go to cancel my booking

I have logged in to my book and the first button I see on the page is cancel, excellent

I clicked cancel and confirmed, it appears my booking has been cancelled

I have yet to receive an email confirming this, I would like an email confirmation as it seems a bit too easy to cancel my booking and I just want to make sure its gone through

Apart from that, its one of the easiest booking and cancelling systems I have tested, really nice and easy.

(2) If this wasn’t a test, would you have made a purchase? Why or why not?

I would of been happy to make a purchase, though i wasnt too sure how i would pay, and WHO i would be paying, also after booking i was not told what to do in the confirmation email….do i print this out and give it to the rental company when i arrive etc?
That is the only reason why i would of not made a purchase

(3) What could have been improved upon?

More information on cars

• reviews and ratings of car
• allow users to sort cars better (4 door, 2 door, AC, etc)
• categorise the cars into various groups (most fuel efficient, most luxurious)
• include website reviews telling users what cars are the most fuel efficient, luxurious etc
• Tell users what the payment process is before and after they book
• Include a confirmation email to tell users they have cancelled the booking

When I started online business, I use to jump from one idea to the next. I’ve found many new entrepreneurs fall in to the same trap. Although it’s good to have lots of ideas, unfortunately many ideas are wasted because there’s no way they can be successfully acted on.

#1 business secret
The biggest business secret I’ve ever learnt is to first decide on something you know you can be the best in the world at. If you can’t be the best in the world at what you are doing, then it just isn’t worth devoting time to. Choose something else and focus all your creative ideas into that one thing. Lets take my friend Robbie who want to start a website about all kinds of cars. Robbie wants to sell advertising on his website.

Can he be the best in the world a building a website about cars? Possibly, but not likely, unless he have the cash to compete against the worlds giant media corporations, many of whom have well established car portals. So what does he do? He needs to decide what he can be the best in the world at. I suggested to Robbie he could perhaps try starting the best website in the world on one of the following:

• Vintage cars
• cars with custom paint jobs
• fast cars
• Fords
• V8 Fords
• V8 Fords with superchargers
• Australian V8 Fords with superchargers

Robbie (being Australian) then got excited because he knows a lot about V8 fords and decided to create a website about Aussie V8 fords.  This will be Robbie’s Niche and with little effort, he can then become the best in the world at his niche. From there, he can then expand gradually, using he leverage of being the best Aussie V8 Ford to expand include American V8 fords also or expand to include car insurance advertising for ford V8′s.

Now what? Focus your ideas.
Now that Robbie has decided his niche and start posting photos of people doing burnouts in V8 Fords, he needs to channels his brilliant ideas. Every idea he gets, he needs to ask himself “will this idea help me be the best V8 Ford website in Australia” if his answer is “no” then he needs to get back on target.

But isn’t it a beneficial to be good at everything?
It sure is. Being multi-talented can be a great asset in getting ahead, but it needs to be controlled. Even an existing successful business that diversifies from their core goals too much is potentially in very dangerous waters.

SUMMARY
“Think of an achievable niche that you can be the best in the world at.”

“Ensure ideas contribute to you being the best at one thing at a time, not many things.”