United rentals e-commerce
PRODUCT DESIGN · CRM · ILLUSTRATION · B2B/ENTERPRISE · DESIGN SYSTEMS · AI
For 5 years, I’ve had the pleasure of working with United Rentals—the largest equipment rental company in the world. I was a lead designer working to maintain their e-commerce website, introduce features, and increase performance of the site.
The site was riddled with slow API calls, usability issues, and declining SEO due to said issues. It was my team’s job to create solutions for enterprise-level problems that could improve customer experience of the site in order to meet business goals and increase customer satisfaction. Through collaborative client relationships, we were able to transform the United Rentals digital ecosystem.
Smart Suggestions
Smart Suggestions used machine learning to surface personalized equipment recommendations across the product listing pages, marketplace, and a CRM email flow that would estimates when a customer would repeat the order.
a new type of supercategory Landing page
United Rentals' huge product catalog made on-site navigation so difficult that it would lead customers to Google search products directly. Often, this would surface UR’s Supercategory slow-loading page as an entry point for the user due to the sheer volume of products they offer for rent.
At the end of the day, this led to loading speedings of 1 minute or more which hurt both user experience and SEO/AEO/GEO rankings. To prioritize page speed, I removed product loading from this page to get rid of the problem entirely. The page was then redesigned to improve discoverability for both customers and search crawlers.
Now it’s a fast and effective navigational point… the polar opposite of original. Who would’ve thought? Oh we did.
a new look for the PDP
United Rentals went through a brand redesign in early 2022. My team leveraged this as an opportunity to improve the Product Detail Page experience and other parts of the site.
We optimized the page by creating better information hierarchy that improved usability and access to important information for customers. On the mobile version, in particular, we added a sticky bar to keep rental rate and the Add to Cart button accessible as the user scrolled.
Looking sleek was a nice cherry on top.
Owning the customer experience from web -> email
Like any major enterprise, United Rentals keeps in touch with their customers through email. As the only designer, I helped design sales/content-driven campaigns and triggered emails tied to milestones in the equipment rental journey.
I had many emails to design and consistency throughout platforms was of utmost priority. In order quickly scale my efforts and maintain cohesion, I built a dedicated email design system that established patterns from layout to componentry. This design system served to extend the United Rental’s universe to email as an extension of the customer journey, rather than being a disconnected entity.
Illustration
Equipment rentals can seem dry and bleek. To communicate visually and work with severe API limitations, I helped direct the creation of an illustration style to use in moments of frustration as an opportunity to delight users.