New Van2go web site sees TLS aim at retail van rental market

                                   
A new web site aimed at the retail van rental market - www.van2go.co.uk - has been launched by TLS Vehicle Rental this month.

The web site marks the first time that the GE-owned commercial vehicle rental specialist has had an online presence aimed at the retail sector. It is designed to appeal to people who want a van for a day or weekend. To help them move house, for example.

However, Van2go is also expected to find customers among small businesses to provide cover for when their own vehicles are off the road or to access short term extra support.

The online reservation system on the web site has been piloted over recent months and, in addition to standard testing, more than 1,000 hits and dozens of bookings were made by customers who simply found the web site, despite the fact that it was essentially still secret. The most popular vehicle and customer type was the 7.5 tonne for house moves.

Sean Welham, marketing director, said: The fact that we were able to generate interest and business from a web site that effectively no one knew about, shows that there are definite opportunities in the retail van hire sector for TLS. Retail customers must have known enough about TLS to type our name and van rental into a search engine to find Van2go.

The new site is designed to be as easy to use as possible for retail customers, avoiding commercial vehicle industry language in favour of simply describing vans as small, medium and large while providing illustrations. Prices are designed to be industry competitive.

Promotion will include on-vehicle livery promoting the website on TLS vans in the North London area, the site will be promoted on banner ads on yell.com, and investment will also be made to ensure that Van2go appears in the top five result rankings on Google.co.uk, when key words such as van rental are searched.

Welham added: The whole rental process is different for retail customers as opposed to businesses. They tend to do a simple online search and book a vehicle based on convenience, availability and price. We believe that we score highly in all these areas.

This is an exciting development for us. We have substantial in-house knowledge of the retail van rental market that Van2go will allow us to exploit, and we look forward to building up additional custom through the web site over the coming months.