CarMax car eCommerce platform

2026

A car costs 59 million tugrik. Nobody is completing that purchase in a browser, and the design does not pretend otherwise. What this platform actually does is take a deposit and book you an appointment. I audited the flows before development started.1

Role
Product design, web platform and mobile app
Client
CarMax, with Midas Finance on the loan path
Scope
Three purchase paths, each designed for desktop and for the app
Year
2026, in development
Design file
CarMax Wireframes

Three ways to buy one car

The main flows page I was handed is three bands, stacked. Buy something in stock with cash. Buy something in stock on a loan. Or order a car that does not exist yet and wait 45 to 60 days for it.

Three horizontal bands of desktop screens on a dark canvas, each running left to right from a car detail page through a sequence of order screens. The top band is headed with the Mongolian for buy or order a car.
Three bands, three purchase paths, the same journey shape in each.

I laid them side by side first, because stacking them is how I noticed they are mostly the same product. The car page is shared. The order summary is shared. What changes is the middle, where the money gets arranged.

All three stop at the same door

Diagram. Three entry paths, in stock with cash, in stock on a loan, and order one, all feed into the same two steps: a 500,000 tugrik reservation fee and a booked time slot to sign in person, which leads to the branch.
The convergence is the design. Everything before it is a way of qualifying you.

Every path ends on a 500,000₮ reservation fee and a booked time at a branch. The fee is under one percent of the car, and I checked that the copy says it counts toward the price rather than sitting on top of it.

This is not a checkout with a car catalogue in front of it. It is a booking system with a car catalogue in front of it, and knowing which one you are building changes every screen after the listing.

Booking a time to sign

A CarMax order screen. Buyer name, surname and phone fields at the top, then a section headed book a time to sign the contract, with branch opening hours and address on the left and a July calendar on the right with the 22nd selected and eight bookable time slots underneath. A panel on the right shows the 500,000 tugrik reservation fee.
The contract appointment, with the branch hours and address sitting right next to the calendar.

The instruction is plain: choose the day you will come to the branch in person. Underneath the calendar the design puts the opening hours and the full address, and I flagged that as the right call, because that information normally lives three clicks away on a contact page and is needed exactly here.

It also asks for very little. Surname, first name, phone, and an email. No account, no password, no address, nothing the branch is going to ask for anyway when you turn up with your documents. I recommended keeping it that thin.

The confirmation screen. Order number, a status reading payment pending, an order date of 2026-07-15, and a panel showing the contract appointment on 2026-07-22 at 13:00 with the 500,000 tugrik fee and a pay button.
The confirmation, dated 2026. The calendar that produced it was headed 2025.

The loan path collects people

The loan version of the same screen. Below the buyer's own details there are two more identical blocks headed contact person information one and two. A panel on the right is badged Midas Finance and shows a monthly payment, down payment, loan amount, term and interest rate.
Buyer, then two more people. The Midas panel does the arithmetic on the right.

The cash path asks for one person. The loan path asks for three. Below your own details are two more blocks, headed contact person one and contact person two, each wanting a name and a phone number.

That is how consumer lending works here, and I agreed with putting it on the same screen as the rest of the order rather than behind a separate application. I also flagged it as the screen where somebody discovers they need to phone a relative before they can continue, which the team should keep in mind when they read the drop-off numbers later.

What three percent means

The Midas panel shows a 59,000,000₮ car with 5,900,000₮ down, a 53,100,000₮ loan over 76 months, a monthly payment of 1,800,000₮, and an interest rate of 3%.

Those numbers only agree with each other if the 3% is monthly. I ran 53,100,000₮ over 76 months at three percent a month and got 1,781,000₮, which is the number on the screen. At three percent a year it would be 768,000₮, less than half.2

So the figure is right and the label is incomplete. It reads Хүү 3% with no period attached, and a buyer comparing it against a bank rate quoted annually will read it as annual. I recommended adding the one word, and adding the total repayable, which fixes it better.

  1. Wireframes and design files rather than a live product. Prices, names, order numbers and loan figures are the data in the file, which may be placeholder. This page covers the desktop web flows. There are separate files for the mobile app and for Midas that I have not gone through.
  2. Standard amortisation, and the agreement with the screen is close enough that it is not a coincidence. Monthly quoting is normal for consumer lending in Mongolia. The problem is not the rate, it is that the label does not say which.