If you’re running a successful rental business, you probably feel like you’re constantly putting out fires.
You’re keeping track of your inventory, managing invoices and billing, dealing with customer and staff demands, and taking orders.
There’s no time to take a step back and work on the business…instead of in it.
Marketing takes a backseat, and your website hasn’t been updated in years.
But the thing is: a high performing equipment rental website streamlines operations and increases bookings.
Especially in today’s market.
You’re competing with large national players, so if you don’t have a website that makes it easy to browse your fleet and book rentals, you’re leaving money on the table.
And that’s the bare minimum.
There are plenty of other clever tactics you can use on your website to increase the dollar utilization of your equipment and keep your fleet out on rent.
In this blog, we’re going to share the 7 elements all high performing equipment rental websites have, and why they matter.
The best part? Most of these tactics are easy enough for you to implement in your chosen equipment rental website builder.
Why you should care about your website
A well-designed equipment rental website is more than an online catalog; it’s a business asset.
In 2024, when 268 million buyers shop online in the US alone1, your rental customers expect you to have a digital presence and an easy online booking system.
They’re often on tight timelines and prioritize simplicity, speed, and convenience.
And they can get it from the big national players.
The most successful equipment rental businesses have websites with clear fleet descriptions, easy online booking processes and transparent prices.
So if you want to grow utilization and futureproof your business, it’s important you enable your customers to complete their entire rental order on your website.
In today’s market, your website can drive repeat business and customer loyalty.
The flipside? You risk losing leads to national players or other local independents who’ve invested in better technology. Fewer leads means lost revenue and lower utilization.
Plus, a digitized sales flow can also leverage automation to save you hours in manually placing orders.
What are the essential elements of an equipment rental website?
1. Conversion-optimized design
The ultimate success metric of your website? Conversions. These are the actions users take on your website that lead to revenue. Most of the time on an equipment rental website this is a rental request booking, inquiry form, email or phone call.
You want every part of your website to nudge your leads towards taking a conversion action. Every conversion helps increase your order value and improve customer engagement.
First, make sure your website has a clean, uncluttered layout that’s easy to navigate. Resist the urge to have endless amounts of text on each page, or to group a lot of information together on the homepage.
A simple homepage that clearly states what you do, who for, and where you’re located, like the below Quipli customer example, is a great place to start. Ensure your navigation bar at the top of your website is simple too, so your customers can quickly find where they want to go.
2. Strong calls to action
Calls to action can help increase conversions, address buyer hesitation, and improve user experience on your website.
These are clear, concise prompts on every page that tell readers what to do next. They help guide users towards taking a conversion action.
Think about where you can add buttons or links to guide your customer to the desired outcome, using text like “Rent Now,” “Browse Our Rentals” or “Get a Quote” on all critical pages (product pages, homepage, checkout).
3. Detailed product pages
Build trust with customers who haven’t rented through you before by showing them your fleet.
Each product should have its own page with descriptions, high-quality images, and pricing. Adding videos of the equipment being used, manuals and a live availability tracker can also help streamline operations and bookings, but they aren’t necessary.
The more content and links you have included on your product pages, the better. This helps with your visibility in Google searches. You’ll also want a clear, sales-driven call to action that creates a sense of urgency for the reader, like a “Rent Now” button.
Remember: keep the design clean and avoid text-heavy pages.
4. Seamless checkout process
If you have eCommerce functionality on your website where customers can reserve and pay online, great. A fully digitized checkout process helps you sell in your sleep, gives your customers a five-star experience, and can save you hours of admin time.
If you still rely on phone calls and emails to take orders, your website should make it as easy as possible for customers to find a product and submit an inquiry.
An intuitive, simple checkout process with date selectors, quantity fields and easy payment options is recommended. Minimal steps to complete the booking give your customers a smooth checkout experience and drives more successful transactions.
In most equipment rental website builders, you can also add optional one-click upsells at the checkout stage. Quipli customers like this feature because it allows your customers to add other pieces of equipment that are generally rented together to their order without having to leave their cart.
This addition to your checkout flow could help you simplify decision-making for users and drive up your average order value.
5. Location information
If you’ve got multiple locations, use your website to help your customers find and reach you easily.
You could either have a dedicated landing page for each location, if your fleet differs between them, or one location page with full address details, contact information, and a Google Maps link for each of your offices.
If you’re relying on local SEO, this information is crucial. And if you’re not, your customers still need to know where they can pick up equipment.
Having your address on your website is an important credibility marker that builds trust with audiences and reduces the need for unnecessary customer phone calls and emails.
6. High quality visuals
Give your new customers the right impression from the start with professional, high resolution equipment and team images on your website pages.
For your product pages, consider showcasing your equipment from different angles and include close ups of important details like controls to build trust and help customers understand the product.
Demo videos are another great way to build confidence with visitors, cut down unnecessary spec inquiries and encourage orders. They can increase your conversions because customers feel more confident renting equipment that they understand.
7. Mobile optimization
63% of Google searches in the US are performed on a mobile device2, so a website that isn’t optimized for mobile could lose significant traffic and potential customers.
Users should be able to access your website easily from any device. Your website needs to have a fully responsive design that adapts to mobile devices, fast load times, and a touch-friendly navigation. When you’re making or improving your website, most equipment rental website builders will use scaling options to ensure your desktop design automatically adapts to mobiles. But it’s worth checking everything looks professional and the functionality and breakpoints are correct across all devices.
How can I tell if my website is performing well?
Your website might look great, but if you’re not tracking its performance, you’re operating in the dark. You need to get familiar with key data metrics and set up a system that helps you regularly assess how effective your website is.
Why? Monitoring how your site performs over time empowers you to make strategic, data-driven marketing and business decisions.
Let’s say your data shows less than 1% of the people that land on your website make a rental request. You’ll probably want to optimize it better for conversions.
Or maybe your data shows 20% of your inventory pages generate 80% of your website traffic. This shows market demand and might encourage you to add more of these products to your fleet.
Here’s how you can measure if your website is delivering results:
- Set up Google Analytics (GA4):
Install the free tool Google Analytics to your website so you can capture user behavior like traffic, bounce rates and conversions. Here’s how - Create conversion goals:
In GA4, set up conversion goals that you want to measure (rentals, phone calls, form submissions) - Leave for a few weeks
Let Google track traffic and performance for a couple of weeks before you make any changes, so you have a baseline to come back to - Measure performance
Review your key metrics like conversion rates, bounce rates and traffic sources to understand how well your website is driving rentals and leads - Optimize
Use the data to improve your website. Often, equipment rental businesses will tweak calls to action, image sizes and the checkout process to improve page speed and the number of conversions - Regularly track analytics
Decide what cadence works for you – once a month? Every 90 days? If you want your website to keep delivering results, consistency is key
See how your equipment rental website could be one of your most powerful growth tools?
High performing websites don’t just help customers find you and see your inventory; they can radically streamline your operations and keep more of your fleet rented out for longer.
With the right equipment rental website builder, these 7 essential elements are easy to implement (without any complicated coding).
Book a demo today to see how Quipli’s top-rated website builder could boost your fleet’s utilization and drive repeat business.
References
- https://www.tidio.com/blog/online-shopping-statistics/
- https://www.oberlo.com/blog/google-search-statistics
