Budget claims to have been “renting great cars to value-minded customers since 1958”.  A pity that they didn’t spend some of those years making their website a little easier to find.

For one thing, you may experience trouble accessing their homepage. If you type in “www.budget.com” you’ll get an error message; in fact, the screen will go blank for a long time, which is enough to turn away most internet users. In fact, this review almost didn’t push through, simply because it took 15 minutes to figure out a way to access the site. That’s 14 minutes more than what most people will give.

 It’s a pity since www.budget.com has a great domain name with high recall—if only it worked.  To actually get to their site, you have to go about it circuitously, through another website that gives them as a link. In fact, the URL that successfully registered was http://www.budget.com/budgetWeb/home/home.ex. Who’s going to remember that? Clearly, something is very, very wrong. And in terms of “hits” and potential sales, the company loses out not only on casual browsers but any referrals that people may give. “I got my car from www.budget.com” says a happy customer—but when anyone else tries to type that in, they’ll get a blank.

So let’s sayyou find their home page, finally. But the problem doesn’t end there. It does a poor job of actually telling the first-time visitor about their key strength: that they’ve been in the car rental business for over 40 years. Sure, there’s a registration field (a 4-step car process, where you type in your travel information,  then are directed to a “Budget Locator”—essentially, finding a travel agency office nearest your home town). But unless you know about the company (and in the Internet, you can assume none of that), you’d think they’d be like any of the 6,500,000 other car rental agencies that claims to give good deals. The least they should do is to put their tagline at the masthead, right underneath the company logo, so it’s viewed on every page. Not everyone will have the patience to go to “About Us.”

What makes these errors so frustrating is that, as a whole, Budget is a good company—and generally, a good website. But being accessible to web surfers, and making a strong first impression, are absolutely crucial in convincing people to actually navigate what’s on the other pages. Think about it: with so many other websites to browse through, there’s nothing to stop them from giving up on www.budget.com entirely. But if you look at the content of the site, and the kind of tools it offers, it really is worth visiting. The trouble is just getting them through the front door.

And once they’re “in”, so to speak, it’s smooth sailing. The site does a pretty good job of presenting information related to the actual rental, a service they call “Budget Locator.” Basically, based on the date and location of your trip, the site will generate a map of your area with all the agencies that you can call, with their locations clearly marked by number (corresponding to a list at the side). Plus, a box at the left hand side of the page records your transaction history, with all the travel details and the opportunity to backtrack to any field in case you change your mind. Then they take it a step further: the final step of the process gives the deals of the week and the option to get email alerts of any future bargains and discounts.

The website design won’t win any awards for originality, but in a service industry like car rentals, people aren’t looking for flashy graphics or witty text, or hundreds of links to information. (He wants to hear about cars, and how much it will cost, and how much he can save: it’s that simple. Ironically, being too flashy will work against the company in an industry like this—it comes across as too stereotypically “used car salesman”). But www.budget.com’s design (apart from those opening page blunders) is actually pretty well organized, intuitive, and easy on the eyes. The basic effect is that visitors feel like they’re in the hands of a company that knows what it’s doing, and has made everything easy for them to do.  Clearly, 40 decades of car rental experience have taught them a lot.

www.budget.com also proves that having a lot of information doesn’t necessarily mean shoving it all down the viewer’s throat in five seconds. It appropriately divides data into different pages, allowing visitors to access details according to their need and preference. A separate page lists the types of cars that you can rent, including safety features and seating capacity—very helpful for people who may not know which model to rent, or have special concerns like traveling with small children. There’s also a separate page on deals, organized by category. A glossary, a list of rental procedures and policies, and a list of their “promises” (including no booking fees and the lowest rates) are grouped conveniently under “Customer Care” rather than being splashed all over the main part of the website.

The site also has a feature for Frequent Renters, which will save your customer information so you don’t have to enroll all over again. It’s a good way to develop customer loyalty, though the site should have had a page listing the benefits or rewards programs. As it stands, there’s nothing to actually encourage visitors to sign up long-term (although with an interface this easy to use, it probably will have repeat customers).

In summary, www.budget.com has excellent features that are well organized, user-friendly, and well tailored to the needs of a traveler looking for affordable rental cars. Its weakness, however, lies in the first minute of the browsing experience—when people haven’t read about the site, or had a chance to go through the material. Because of a weak home page, and how you can’t directly type in the domain name without getting an error message, most visitors will walk away without seeing it work. They just have to improve on those factors, and everything will be great.