Using a Cost Calculator in Car Rental Business

Are you interested in starting a car rental business and wondering where to begin? The car rental business, like any other business, requires you to come up with strategies to build a profitable business.  With proper planning, execution, and hard work, you can enjoy great success in your business. 

According to the statistics carried out in the recent past, the car rental market is expected to grow higher In 2021, it was estimated to be worth US$102.8 billion with a further $250 billion reached by 2033.  The rise comes from the growing popularity and demand for online car rental services.  With this, your car rental business has a great chance of growing and earning you a decent income. 

Car rental companies have learned the secret of using websites, mobile apps, software, or plugins to make this business a success.  One such plugin is the Cost Calculator. In this article, we will talk about this plugin – its advantages, and everything else you need to know about it. 

How to use cost calculator for car rental business?

All About the Cost Calculator

A cost calculator is a simple smart estimation or quote tool that allows your customers to create quotes or price estimation forms before they can rent a car.  This WordPress Cost Calculator Plugin helps your clients build estimation forms using simple, easy steps.  

This provides a clear idea of the cost calculation for the services they receive.  It’s simply a more transparent way for your customers to get a clear idea of how much it’s going to cost them.  

This WordPress plugin can be customized to allow your customers to easily choose time, date, location, vehicle types, and any other details you may want to include. 

WordPress allows you to create your pricing calculator by simply dragging and dropping the elements, you want in your form builder.  You can also create an unlimited number of calculation forms and add them to any page on your website. This is the kind of freedom you need for your car rental business – a freedom that will not only allow you to create a friendly website but get the right tools to work for you. 

Transparency in any business plays a huge role in customer satisfaction.  Providing customers with cost estimates for goods or services is one way to keep a business transparent.  This principle applies across many businesses and the car rental business is one of them.  

Most car rental companies have found that once they tell a customer how much it will cost them upfront, the customer satisfaction rate increases.  This is because they can see the cost before committing to getting the services.  

A cost calculator for your website is an excellent tool to help you achieve more transparency in your pricing.  This is one feature clients will love and drive them to use your services often thus growing your business and income. 

The cost calculator offers you some of the best features to help your business. These features include: 

  • Calculation Builder – A drag-and-drop calculation builder
  • Estimation forms – Allows you to build unlimited estimation forms of any type in a few easy steps
  • Instant estimation – Allows instant estimate costs
  • Appearance – You can freely customize fonts, color, or the background
  • ReCAPTCHA – Ensures your page is secure from internet bots
  • Compatibility – It’s compatible with page builders
  • Calendar – Allows you to include a date picker
  • Payment methods – Provides multiple payment methods – Stripe, PayPal, or WooCommerce
  • Contact form 7 – Integrates with the contacts
  • Required fields – help improve the usability
  • Orders dashboard – manages all the orders at the checkout
  • Conditions – allows the calculator to work out the calculation using a defined method.
  • Product calculator – Integrate your calculator with WooCommerce for more seamless interaction.

Cost calculator demo – see it in action

The Cost Calculator is compatible with WordPress websites and is very easy to put together on the platform You can use the free version or go for the PRO version with more enhanced features. 

Once you have installed it, it’s time to work on your calculator. Here are some highlights of how to work on your calculator builder for your car rental business.  

Once you have installed and activated your plugin to your WordPress website, you will see your cost calculator icon on the dashboard menu. 

Go to Dashboard >Cost Calculator menu.

To start you off, there are no forms on the list yet.  You are welcome to create your own calculators by simply clicking on Create.

You can also import prebuilt calculators. From the prebuilt calculators, you can choose any demo calculator and edit to fit your needs.   In our case here, we want to get a car rental calculator. 

Click on Car rental >Preview.

The preview offers you a basic example of how the calculator looks like with the elements you would like to have or not in your actual calculator.

The calculator gives your users a chance to view both the desktop and mobile view.  This will give you insight into how both users can use the calculator on different devices. 

You can now edit this calculator depending on what elements you want to use.  For example, 

The type of cars are you renting – You will be able to edit by including all the car types and images 

The kind of trips you are offering – You can have different types of trips that you can include with different prices for easier picking.

A calendar to help with date picking

Fuel cost – Ensure you set it up in an easy way that your customers understand.  It is also advisable to give several options.

Finally, the total description which works as the total cost for different elements you have included in the calculator.

Remember to save all the changes you make on each page and preview after every change to see the effects. 

Once you finish with the elements, there are other features you need to edit – conditions, settings and appearance. 

Conditions

Conditions are only available to you if you are using the PRO version.  They help you enhance your calculator for seamless use.  It also comes with a little helper on the side to help you learn how to use it.

Settings

The settings feature helps you adjust the currency and payment integrations you would like to use in your business – PayPal, Stripe, Woo Checkout, etc.

The PRO Version offers you all these features to enhance your business even more.  These integrations include:

  • Send form – allows you to get your customers email addresses when they share them in order to receive the results via email. This is an excellent way to get more leads for present and future business
  • Woo Products – If you have activated woo commerce, your calculator automatically integrates with it.  This makes it easy for users when they land on the woo checkout page as they are able to complete transactions fast.
  • Payment options – You choose what payment options to use – PayPal or stripe.

    Appearance

    You can choose how you want your calculator to look like by changing any design aspect including the background color, typography, borders, spacing, etc.

The appearance is the icing on the cake for your calculator.  Choose the best color combinations to attract your users.

Advantages of using a cost calculator in your car rental business

If you want to know if there is any benefit of using this tool, look no further.  There are many benefits to using an online calculator, some of them include:

  • Boosts your businesses’ credibility – As we have mentioned above, transparency in business brings credibility building a sense of honesty with your clients.
  • Keeps the prices transparent to all – Businesses that keep their prices transparent without any hidden charges attract and keep their customers. Be it discounts, coupons or the normal price, the customer is able to see all this information as they interact with the calculator. 
  • Improves user ability on your website – Your website will work better and faster if you enhance it with such tools that give your clients the results they need in one stop. 
  • Grows your lead generation – A friendly easy-to-use website is a go to for many users.  They love a platform that not only gives them all the information they need but one that they are able to pay for a service or product as fast.  An online calculator does that in one minute while recording email addresses for all users who are potential return customers.
  • Reduces the time it takes to get quotes – Gone are the days when you would have to receive emails from interested customers so you can send them a quote. The automated estimate forms provide these quotes for your customers in real-time making it efficient for every user.   
  • Makes your business highly competitive – Adding this calculator places your business in the top tier where only the best compete for attention. This draws more customers and more profits. 
  • Increases conversion rates through its easy buying process – No one wants to waste their precious time trying to buy a service or product online.  Everyone has limited time and the faster the process the better for everyone. As a business owner, you will experience more business and for the buyer, it effectively saves them time.
  • Makes the sales process faster and smarter – In the world of technology, nobody wants to use the same old methods in their sales departments.  This tool is one of the smartest moves in enabling faster sales.
  • Provides additional information – Sometimes, one pays for a service they have no idea what it includes.  The calculator allows you to choose what you want to include in the price you pay.

Conclusion

Starting a business is one thing, but investing in that business so that it gives you a good return is another.  Most people lack the know-how of using small tools here and there to give users a better experience on their websites. A WordPress Cost Calculator Plugin is one of the smartest tools you can add to your website to give you that business growth you desire.  

To make your car rental business easy and effective for you and your users, it’s best you add this tool to your WordPress website.  Remember you can go for the free version or use the PRO version to give you the added features you need. 

This is a secret every business owner should know and implement irrespective of what business they are undertaking.