Classic car rental website with user accounts

Hi all,

I think this is the right place to post this but I'm not sure. I own several classic cars and started investigating creating a website to deal with renting these cars out, week-to-week. Others had obviously made websites doing the same thing I initially aimed to do- that being renting out several cars on a very small-time personal basis.

However, that got me thinking. There seems to be an opportunity to create a website where users put up their own classic cars for rent, can easily market the cars in the way they choose etc. I'm essentially trying to create a sort of eBay for classic cars (this isn't the perfect analogy, as car rentals are quite different transactions to the selling of second-hand goods). The money to be made is in exactly the same fashion to eBay- become the most valuable, largest database of something people want (second hand goods/classic car rental), and take a small commission on each transaction (say 10%), as you offer the customer a utility that is of high value to them.

I hope you understand the issues I face, those being:

- A user account system where classic car owners can easily sign up and start marketing their cars for renting out. Also, being the admin, I would like complete control over user accounts, should I need to change something in an instant).
- An automated, secure payment system, so that the commission for each transaction comes into my account, and I don't have to worry about this, and neither does the customer (I guess using PayPal would be the best way to deal with this, but I'm an entire noob to creating an online business such as this, so please forgive my ignorance).
- A highly usable, easy-to-navigate website. This may be the easiest of the lot, as there are some impressive car rental templates already out there. This would include a good calendar view (essential for a popular car rental website).
- A database of the vehicles on the website, and a way to sort by specifications- engine size, colour blah blah blah and a high quality search function (perhaps just a google search plugin would be best?).

There may well be other issues I need to get to grips with, but off the top of my head these are the big problems. The key concern I have is to do with the infrastructure of a website with users and having a secure, easy-to-use payments system.

Also, apologies if I come across as knowing nothing about building websites like this. I don't really, but with a good idea and the wealth of high-quality templates and plugins these days I feel like I don't really need a deep knowledge of this stuff, although of course it would be helpful.

 

Couple of quick questions

1) Do you want to develop it by your own or want to hire someone for it?
2) If you want to hire someone then what is your budget for it.

Also what you explained is pretty straight forward but it will be good if you can show some reference website if there is any.

Please feel FREE to post if you have any question and reply in detail as much as possible

 

1) I'd hope to develop it myself. As I say I'm relatively new to this but I'm pretty tech savvy and have a reasonable grasp of HTML and what I say are the fundamentals. But if you think it would make more sense to outsource then I'm open to that possibility.
2) Again it depends. If this would take a week of development for a relative novice then it would seem silly to spend a lot on outsourcing it.

Here are some templates that have a generally good aesthetic feel for what I want-

http://www.templatemonster.com/demo/50571.html
http://www.templatemonster.com/demo/50658.html

As I say, it has to be pleasing on the eye. But more importantly it has to be usable and have a look you can trust. As in you visit the website and you feel you can trust the business and the services it's offering, and can see that it wouldn't be that much hassle to put up your cars for rental.

 

If you have some HTML ability and some knowledge of WordPress then you can buy and WordPress theme like you showed above to give a try. Using WordPress and a WP theme will help you to develop it in 1 week.

 

I would definitely go with a WordPress site, but I would look for a responsive theme, like this one:

http://www.templatemonster.com/demo/52415.html

You should be able to get the site up and running in a very short period of time. With all the plugins available, it will give you a lot of flexibility.

 

Thanks for the advice. You're right that it's very important to get a website that's properly scaled for all devices. As far as I can tell, finding one of these templates that can be completely controlled through WordPress plugins would make the whole process much easier. With that in mind I started searching around and found this site.Although not the flashiest like many of those I've come across (perhaps a good thing really), it does seem to be completely controlled through WP plugins. What do you think?

http://wpcarrental.ecalypse.com/

 

As you guess, there are two types to solve the problem. First one is to create your own application. Sometime it's s good choice, but sometime not. Benefits of that approach are: application will be designed only for you and will fit your needs, also will be flexible and easily maintainable, will not contain unnecessary code and features, will be pretty cheap if you have ability to develop it by yourself (in that case you will not pay developers). Disadvantages are: can be pretty expensive to build such system if you need to find good developers, such application will be designed only for you and therefore only developers who work on it will have the 'whole picture' of the system, changing developers after a while could be pretty expensive, lack of documentation, no community.

On the other hand you can use some of already existing platforms and applications. Probably it will be much cheaper with such solution, especially if it's open source, such wordpress, drupal, joomla and so on. You can also be able to find a documentation on the web, there is also community, many people can help you and give advices, there are many plugins and many themes which you can just download without editing or creating. However, many such existing platforms maybe will not suits your needs, so you need to customize it, some plugins not doing exactly what you want and you need edit them or to find someone who will do it for you, and it costs of course. They are not designed especially for you and therefore could be a difficult for maintaining. These were couple of bad sides of using existing application.

Now you should decide what is better solution for you. If I were you, I would first search for some existing solution which is the closest to your needs. Because you will have payment methods and communication with payment gateways, customers, orders, products (cars)..., I would say you should look for some eCommerce application. It is very important because such applications has already integrated solutions for paying online. It can be wordpress with ecommerce plugins or pure ecommerce application like Magento, Prestashop, Spree, .... Then you should look which one is the better/easier for customization or which one has some plugins about multi-sellers, renting or other features which you need. If there is no such application, they you should go for a custom application and create it from scratch.

 

Hi,
Better you can approach a best web development company and provide your requirement and get done with your website, else you can go for ready made rental booking script and customize the missing features that you need, this will be cost effective more over in no time you can launch you site.

 

Hi all. I've found the more choices I look at the more confusing it gets... Thanks for the input already though, it's been very helpful.

This website using squarespace is very much like the design I would like-

http://love-classics.co.uk/

I'd simply like to add the booking component I've described below.

Basically I'd like to combine a relatively simple, clean theme such as this-

http://www.templatemonster.com/demo/46038.html

With a booking system like this-

http://www.extensionsforjoomla.com/livedemo/vikrentcar/index.php/en/

The booking system has to deal with payments, login information, a calendar view with dates not available clearly shown, and an easy to use admin back-end that you can find bookings, client information etc.

Also I need the website to not look like a generic car rental website. This is the biggest problem. This is a website made to (at this point in time) deal with, at a rough estimate 10-50 CLASSIC, generally sports cars. It is not for those on holiday just looking for a cheap deal on any old car.

The website has to be able to show off the vehicles, with a page for each car and a nice gallery, some information about each car. Then, further down each individual page I want a simple booking calendar showing availability. There a customer can pick the dates that fit them best, and go through the motions of creating and paying for a booking.