Industry
P2P Car Sharing Marketplace
Role
Product Design • iOS • Android • Web
Turo
Overhauling onboarding and checkout at Turo
For over five years, various teams added features to Turo’s checkout flow with different goals, resulting in a confusing and frustrating experience for Guests. I worked cross-functionally on an ongoing project to simplify onboarding and checkout, which has led to significant growth in revenue and days booked.
Full case study available on request
Existing: Car detail page
New: Checkout
New: Booking animation
Problem
Checkout roadblocks and new guest onboarding friction
Turo’s checkout experience was full of friction for new Guests. As a first-time user, you had to complete a series of steps before you could even reach the final checkout screen for a car you were interested in
Guests would have to first sign up for a new account.
Then they would have to onboard or "Get approved to drive". Meaning they would have to add a phone number, drivers licenses, and finally a payment method.
After 7 lengthy steps, Guests finally reached the checkout screen—by then, nearly 40% of high-intent users had already dropped off before completing their booking.
Previous flow
Opportunity
How might we eliminate or defer unnecessary steps to help Guests reach the checkout screen faster?
Problem
Managing risk as we streamline onboarding and checkout
Turo’s proprietary risk scoring system, used to identify high-risk Guests, relied on information collected during the same parts of the flow where we found the most friction.
Our solution had to strike a careful balance between creating a smoother, more intuitive Guest experience and maintaining the integrity of Turo’s risk assessment process.
Previous flow
Opportunity
How might we reduce friction during the onboarding and checkout experience without compromising the data needed for our Turo Risk Score?
Process
We began by aligning teams and auditing the current state
To move forward, we first needed to align on the problems within the checkout flow, address concerns about the scope of the project, and surface key requirements for potential solutions.
We formed a cross-functional tiger team made up of Risk & Protection, Guest Discovery & Booking, and subject matter experts. The effort involved 3 core designers (myself included) auditing the existing experience to identify pain points.
Next, we held several workshops that brought the team together to understand the current state so we could better ideate on solutions. The outcomes of these sessions established shared principles and goals that guided the project’s success. Several major concepts from the workshop not only reshaped the Checkout experience but also redefined how we approached the broader booking flow and payments.
The service blueprint revealed key dependencies and highlighted gaps in the experience.
Ideation and affinity mapping gave the different domains a chance to align and prioritize opportunities.
We created wireframes to user test, validate, and refine the concept.
Solution
Deferring onboarding and introducing the concept of post-booking steps
Our biggest challenge was determining which information was truly essential to secure a booking, and what could be collected after checkout. This approach allowed Guests to complete their bookings quicker while still enabling the Turo Risk system to operate effectively to maintain the quality of our marketplace.
Click to see: Before and after flows
Solution
Overhauled checkout “TurboBook”
As we explored ways to integrate and delay information capture, a bold idea surfaced: what if we could reduce the seven-page flow to a single screen? This led to a complete overhaul of the checkout experience, combining account creation and booking into one streamlined step, which we called TurboBook internally.
Below is the production design which we landed on after several round of iteration and user testing. Play both videos to see a side-by-side comparison.
Original vs. TurboBook
(note: the signup wall and onboarding steps appeared before Guests could view the checkout).
Results
A big leap forward in modernizing our onboarding and checkout experience
We saw immediate success when we compared to our original experience or control. Due to the increases we saw in paid days, revenue, and conversion we moved quickly to full rollout for all guest. For reference we see an average or 3.5 million active users on our marketplace.
6% increase in Paid Days
This was a core metric and would inform our move to full rollout and enshrinement. We now average 100k booked days per day.
5.25% increase to Net Revenue
For context Turo's net revenue numbers totaled Approximately $958 million in 2024. We also saw average transaction values rise by $9.22 to a new high of $208.74.
9% increase to overall conversion
Conversion numbers and volume improved as guest friction decreased, with more guests efficiently moving through the booking funnel.
Project outcomes
Outside of our business impact this project set many precedents
Set a precedent for a new way to work cross-fuctionally
From the formation of the cross functional tiger team to how we pushed to a larger more ambitious project were all new for Turo. Traditionally improvements were more incremental.
Many teams before us were hesitant to touch the page and risk hurting conversion. Our team made thoughtful and research backed updates.
Modernizing and implementing new design system components
The original experience used many deprecated design components and legacy code. We worked closely with the design system team to improve new component adoption. I also partnered with the DS team to collaborate and inform decision making on new components.
Scale of project was impressive. We defined a core TurboBook experience and defined a phased approach for future releases
We continued to refine the experience with incremental updates such as extending to more guest in different lead time and saw a dramatic increase to paid days.
Phase two will see us adding additional payment options such as apple/google pay, buy now pay later vendors, and installment plans.
Defining designer led improvements
In addition to the core product improvement. I personally led improvements such as the new booking animation and refined sticky bar price display.
My contributions
Senior experience and leadership
Co-led and co-planned workshops
I contributed to planning and leading workshops with the cross functional team.
Partnered with 2 other designers on native app checkout design
The main focus of my design work on iOS and Android centered around the checkout experience and the different edge cases related to that touchpoint.
Owned the web and mobile web experience
I owned the entire web and mobile web design for checkout.
Owned design iterations and main point of contact through implementation
Of the 3 person design team we saw 2 member take maternity leave and in that time I owned all of design. From gathering/responding to feedback to making design updates to QAing. I coordinated all things TurboBook.