RACV Car Match
Launching a new car research platform for RACV, guiding Australians toward their ideal vehicle with clarity and confidence.
Role
Led end-to-end product design, collaborating with a product manager, product owner, business analyst, and offshore development and QA teams.
Tools used
Figma, Miro, Zeroheight, Storybook, Copilot
Project Length
12 months
Introduction
Problem statement:
Buying a car is one of the biggest financial decisions Victorians make, yet the research experience is fragmented, overwhelming, and often biased. RACV saw an opportunity to simplify this process for people by creating an accessible, user-friendly research platform that empowers users to compare, shortlist, and confidently choose the right vehicle while also aligning with RACV’s broader strategy across motoring, finance, and energy.
Objectives:
Empower Confident Car Research: Design and build a platform that empowers users to explore, compare, and shortlist vehicles with ease, combining expert reviews, rich content, and intuitive tools to support informed decision-making.
Tools to support research and evaluation: Introduce interactive features such as vehicle comparison, shortlisting, and filtering to help users confidently narrow their options and progress toward a decision.
Create a expert car review section that users can trust:
Build user confidence and reinforce RACV’s reputation as a trusted authority, the expert car review section will be designed to deliver clear, unbiased, and in-depth insights. This will involve crafting a clean, accessible layout that highlights key review points, detailed pros and cons, and comprehensive information.
Find opportunities to show other RACV products:
Products such as car insurance, emergency roadside assistance, and car loans are highly relevant to car buyers and can be naturally introduced throughout the user journey.
Design System Integration: Apply an existing design system to ensure visual consistency, accessibility, and efficient collaboration between design and development across a growing suite of digital products.
Business Strategy
Advisory: Enhance the car advice that customers are searching for on RACV, strengthening the brand’s reputation as an industry expert.
Moving up the value chain: Reposition Motoring products from the end of the car purchasing funnel to the start.
EV & Energy: Utilise Car Match as a platform to promote electric vehicle ownership and align with RACV's broader energy initiatives around solar and EV charging solutions.
Deepening Motoring Relationship: Build stronger customer relationships through motoring services, creating opportunities to introduce relevant home offerings and increase home cross-sell rates.
Enhance Cross-sell: Surface relevant products like Loans, Emergency Roadside Assistance, and Insurance.
Positioning: Strengthen RACV’s market position by offering an all-in-one platform that keeps customers from turning to competitors.
Insights: Leverage data to further strengthen customer relationships and personalise experiences on the RACV website.
The Approach
The platform was built in phases using an agile methodology. Each phase consisted of 4 steps.
01
Discover & Define
The process starts by clearly defining the scope of work, creating alignment across design, product, development, and business teams. This sets a strong foundation for success.
From there, the problem space is unpacked, linking it to broader business objectives and shaping shared goals that guide the project forward.
Pain points, user data, and scalability considerations are explored early to ensure solutions address real needs and are built to grow. This early-stage collaboration helps surface constraints, align expectations, and ensure the platform integrates smoothly with RACV’s ecosystem and strategic roadmap.
Once the scope is defined, competitive and cross-industry analysis is conducted to identify relevant trends and evolving user expectations. Design work begins in Figma, using existing atomic components, tokens, and established patterns to maintain consistency and efficiency.
Designs are shared regularly in critique sessions attended by UX, Content Design, and Content Authoring teams. These sessions support quality, encourage cross-functional input, and keep teams aligned on what’s happening across different projects.
02
Ideate & Design
03
Test & Validate
After incorporating peer feedback and aligning with stakeholders, the work is validated through research—typically a mix of quantitative and qualitative user testing.
Prototypes are created, along with a participant screener and testing questionnaire. Participants are recruited via Askable, with sessions held either remotely or in person, depending on the nature of the test.
Following testing, findings are synthesised and played back to stakeholders. Agreed actions are then applied to refine the design further and remove any friction points.
After testing, designs move through a two-stage review for formal sign-off. First by the UX leads team, then by Heads of Digital Experience and UX. Where required, Risk and Legal is also involved.
Once approved, documentation is prepared and handover rituals commence. Ongoing support is provided to developers and QA to ensure the vision is accurately implemented.
Post-launch, performance is tracked using tools like heatmaps, clickmaps, scroll maps, session recordings, and Adobe Analytics to identify friction points and opportunities for improvement.
04
Build, Launch & Iterate
Challenges
Designing for edge case data scenarios
Vehicle specifications were sourced from Australian Motoring Services (AMS) API, which often returned incomplete or inconsistent data. To prevent user confusion and protect RACV from legal exposure, designs were needed for fallbacks and error states.
Designing for inconsistent image specs
Vehicle imagery was also served via AMS, using either JATO or IMACA sources. Each source varied in quality, format, and coverage, requiring a flexible design approach to ensure visual consistency and maintain trust regardless of data source.
Estimated Running Costs didn't hit the mark
Early designs included an 'estimated running costs' module, providing users with a estimate of ongoing expenses directly on the vehicle page they were viewing. However, usability testing revealed users didn't want estimates, users wanted to customise the values based on their own experiences.
Shortlists functionality constraints
Shortlisted vehicles are currently stored via browser cookies, meaning the viewer can only browse their shortlist on the same device. Unless users manually share their shortlist via a URL, they’re unable to retrieve their saved selections elsewhere, impacting cross-device continuity and the overall experience.
Hierarchy within the RACV ecosystem
As part of the broader RACV digital ecosystem, RACV Car Match competes for visibility with higher-revenue business units. This can affect its prominence in global navigation and key page placements, creating challenges in driving awareness and engagement from general site traffic.
Variant Overload in Search Results
The platform's search could surface dozens of variants for a single car model, overwhelming users and making broader exploration difficult. The team explored ways to group and summarise variants more intuitively, helping users feel less fatigued and more in control during research.
Outcomes
8.9/10 user satisfaction score
Qualitative and quantitative feedback was overwhelmingly positive, with users praising the platform’s ease of use and accessibility. The experience achieved a median score of 8.9 out of 10 across all participants.
22% of users shortlisted a vehicle
Nearly a quarter of users interacted with the shortlist feature to save vehicles for later, indicating strong intent and deeper engagement. This behaviour suggested users were actively narrowing down their choices, reinforcing the platform’s value in helping with confident decision-making.
42% of users completed a full car search in the first month
Close to half of users completed the intended journey, from applying filters to reaching a vehicle detail page. For a newly launched product with minimal promotion outside RACV channels, this was a promising sign of product-market fit.
Average session duration of 2 minutes 7 seconds
Users spent over two minutes on average engaging with the platform, exploring listings and using tools like filters and comparisons. This was a strong early indicator of interest and usability, particularly for a brand new product.
Laid the foundation for next-stage strategy
The platform successfully set the groundwork for phase two features including lead generation, authenticated user accounts, mobile search uplift, and a wider business strategy around dealer referrals.
The end — or maybe just the beginning?
Whether it’s just a friendly chat or a potential opportunity, feel free to say hello.