Inside Leaseloco’s innovative campaign to transform car leasing transparency

Building on the success of our 2024 Gold Drum award-winning site enhancements, we’ve kept our foot on the gas, further enhancing the user journey by leveraging sophisticated engineering and brilliant UX.

Through rigorous analysis and user feedback, we identified two major pain points for our users:

• Constantly fluctuating prices: The dynamic nature of car lease prices often led to confusion and frustration for users.
• Complex search experience: Traditional search methods were proving cumbersome and inefficient for many users.

To tackle these challenges and deliver on our commitment to user-centricity, we defined the following strategic objectives:

• Improve user experience by simplifying the car leasing journey
• Enhance customer engagement through relevant personalized notifications
• Drive conversions and revenue growth by making deal discovery more efficient

Execution: Creative excellence and implementation

Price Alerts

In the car leasing market, where prices can fluctuate significantly in a short period of time, the ability to act quickly can lead to substantial savings. Price Alerts empower users to track vehicles across multiple lease profiles of varying mileages and terms and receive notifications when prices change. This feature eliminates the need for manual daily checks, saving users time and effort whilst ensuring they never miss out on the best deals.

Price Alerts was introduced to replace our Price Drops feature, which notified users only when a price decreased. Price drops had several limitations which we aimed to solve with Price Alerts:

• Inconsistent price drop detection: price changes were only checked three times per day, meaning users could miss out on deals that fluctuated in price between these checks.
• Lack of engagement: many users saved deals which were already very competitive, and thus never received a price drop email as the deal they saved never got better.
• Ever-decreasing touch point frequency: due to the nature of Price Drops, users stopped receiving emails when prices reached their lowest point because we only notified them when prices were reduced.

Whilst our research indicated a strong demand for Price Alerts, it was important to balance user engagement with the need to avoid overwhelming them with excessive notifications. To achieve this, we developed an event-driven system that handles 10M+ daily price updates across 7M+ deals whilst ensuring accurate and timely notifications without inundating users with spam, striking the right balance between transparency and usability.

Inspired by price-tracking features in the travel industry, Price Alerts have redefined car leasing transparency, providing users with unprecedented convenience and control. Rather than simply notifying users of price drops, we provide full visibility into price fluctuations, educating users about market trends and empowering them to make informed decisions, helping them secure the best possible deal.

LocoAI

Car leasing can be complex, with terms like upfront fees and mileage limits often overwhelming users. LocoAI, the world’s first car leasing AI search tool, simplifies the process by allowing users to articulate their needs naturally, for example searching for "an economical but sporty family car", and then refining this further to "show only premium and luxury options". This type of search simply wouldn’t be possible whilst relying on filters or rigid search boxes, and therefore cannot be performed on any competitor platform.

The implementation of an AI-powered search tool presented several challenges, including the need to integrate with existing AI technologies whilst maintaining cost-effectiveness. Through extensive R&D, we developed an intuitive system capable of interpreting user intent and providing personalized, relevant recommendations. LocoAI enhances the experience for both novice and experienced leasers, making leasing more accessible and user-friendly for those who find traditional search methods too complicated and require a more guided experience.

LocoAI represents a significant breakthrough in the car leasing industry. By integrating OpenAI and Modal, it offers a truly conversational search experience, allowing users to interact with the system in a more natural and dynamic way. Unlike traditional search tools, LocoAI allows users to build upon their queries and refine search results in real-time, seamlessly transitioning between AI-driven recommendations and a more structured browsing experience.

Results: Outcomes and effectiveness

Price Alerts have significantly transformed how users engage with lease pricing, providing real-time visibility into market fluctuations, both good and bad. By eliminating the need for manual tracking, users can now effortlessly monitor price changes and act quickly to secure the best deals. The feature has truly empowered users with more transparency and control than ever before, and has yielded exceptional results vs our previous price drops feature:

• Unique site visitors from email surged by 141%, highlighting the effectiveness of personalized, timely notifications in driving engagement.
• Conversions increased by 211%, showcasing stronger user intent and interest in lease deals presented.
• Revenue grew by 108%, proving the commercial impact of a smarter price-tracking system similar to those found in the travel industry.
• Gross profit rose by 107%, reinforcing the profitability of delivering a more transparent and user-focused experience.

LocoAI has fundamentally changed the way users search for car leases, addressing pain points associated with rigid filters and cumbersome search tools. By enabling conversational, intent-driven queries, LocoAI has led to significant performance gains when compared to traditional browsing:

• Conversion rates soared by 263%, demonstrating the power of AI-driven search in guiding users to the right deals.
• Bounce rates dropped by 5%, indicating improved user engagement and reduced friction in the leasing journey.
• Time spent on site increased by 44%, reflecting deeper interaction with the LeaseLoco brand and our intuitive, AI-powered search experience.

In addition to quantitative results, qualitative insights highlight LocoAI’s ability to handle search queries that were previously impossible with traditional browsing. Users are now able to conduct more personal and specific searches conventional filters and dropdowns simply cannot accommodate. This flexibility allows users to explore leasing options in a more intuitive and natural way, removing a key friction point in the decision-making process.

These results demonstrate not only a substantial improvement in user engagement and experience but also a directly positive impact on LeaseLoco’s top line, proving that user-centricity doesn’t have to come at the expense of scalability and profitability, but rather is fundamental to achieving them. The success of Price Alerts and LocoAI reinforces LeaseLoco’s unwavering commitment to innovation and user-first design, delivering measurable business growth whilst redefining industry standards for transparency, usability, and personalization. By harnessing AI and data-driven automation, we have empowered users with smarter tools that simplify complex decisions, making car leasing more accessible and engaging, and ultimately creating a best-in-class digital experience.