Industry: Vehicle Rental
Services Delivered: WooCommerce customisation, booking logic overhaul, bespoke plugin development, performance fixes
Making a Rental Website Work — For the Owner and the Customer
A1 Car Hire had just changed ownership when I was brought on board. The new owner needed urgent help making the website usable — both for customers booking online and for staff handling availability, extras, and pricing behind the scenes.
The original site had been built on WordPress using WooCommerce, but many of the essential features — like live availability, clear rental pricing, and backend booking management — were either broken, missing, or poorly implemented.
What I Did
- Fixed and enhanced booking logic
Improved the real-time availability system so that unavailable cars no longer showed in search results — removing confusion and reducing booking errors. - Developed custom plugin features
Built a custom plugin to add fixed-price multi-day discounts (e.g. “£60 for one day, £105 for two”) not natively supported by the theme or WooCommerce. - Customised booking extras
Added and refined optional extras like transfers, insurance, and car seats — including dynamic pricing, conditional logic, and validation where needed. - Improved front-end UX
Updated the car listing and booking interface to clearly reflect pricing logic (e.g. “From £20 per day”) and highlight USPs like free child seats and additional drivers. - Back-office improvements
Made it easier for the client to manage bookings internally, and supported them in setting up proper domain email hosting via Hostinger.
Results
The result was a much smoother, clearer, and more professional website — one that better served the client’s needs without requiring a full rebuild. It gave the business owner better control, reduced booking errors, and ultimately made the site usable as a proper business tool.