What's your conversion rate?
That's the percentage of customers who land on your storage facility's website, click rent, and actually finish the whole rental process.
For most operators, that number is significantly lower than they’d like. You’ll never get to 100%—people change their minds for all sorts of reasons—but you can make it better by removing friction from the rental process.
Assuming price and amenities aren't the culprit, why do people click on a unit but stop renting halfway?
It's because of points in the rental process we like to call friction. Friction is when something slows your renter down or rubs them the wrong way.
Any time you ask the customer to take an extra step, you’re adding friction to your online rental experience.
Marketing brings you leads. If you’re not turning those leads into customers, you’re wasting money, time, and effort.
At StoragePug, we see an average of 31% of users finish the self storage checkout process.
This is across many tens of thousands of rentals over a few months. Some facilities are achieving higher conversion rates, and some lower, but that's the average.
Why is reducing online rental friction so important?
If your SEO is amazing and you're spending money on ads, you're getting lots of leads. But if your conversion rate is below average, that means you're losing too many of them.
You can increase your conversion rate to get more rentals without spending more money on marketing.
Ok, let's say you've identified that your conversion rate is too low.
What now?
There are a host of reasons why your conversion rate may be low. Here are many of the common points of friction self storage operators add to their rental flow:
Let's take a look at each of these friction points. Some of them have valid reasons behind them, but we'll offer some alternative ideas where possible.
Reservations are basically an agreement to rent a unit later.
Unfortunately, reservations don’t always turn into rentals. No money has changed hands. They're still just a lead, and a lead could back out and never rent.
Here are the two main reasons operators focus on reservations:
Remember, the biggest difference between renting and reserving a unit is whether or not money changes hands. Everything else can be virtually the same.
Solution
Push rentals instead. Make the rental button bigger and more obvious. You can still collect IDs or other information in the office to complete the rental. Get their payment info so they're now a customer, not a lead!
If your self storage website doesn’t let her book the rental for Saturday, what do you think she’s going to do?
She's most likely going to go to a competitor.
This potential tenant has sat down to rent a unit, not to rent a unit from you. If you won’t let her complete her task, she’s likely to go elsewhere to find someone who will.
Solution
If you aren't nearly full, allow unit rentals in advance. Sparefoot even recommends up to 30 days in advance based on their user data. If you ARE nearly full, then maybe you shouldn't be worried!
Selling self storage insurance is a great way for operators to make some extra money! On top of that, the provided protection can solve a lot of headaches for the facility and the tenant.
Forcing a customer to select insurance during checkout can have a big effect on your rental conversions.
For most operators, it works this way:
This is done to capture more insurance purchases and make more money while ensuring all tenants are covered. This solution makes sense.
But it doesn't make sense if you need better conversions.
Solution
First, make insurance selection optional. Next, set it up to auto-enroll the new tenant after a set time—let's say 14 days. If they show you proof of insurance before then, you exempt them from the auto-enroll.
This removes friction while still ensuring the tenant is covered and securing insurance purchases.
Just make sure to have a disclaimer both during checkout and in their confirmation email.
Many operators want to get a photo ID and a secondary contact before renting to anyone.
It's done for security purposes—these steps make it much harder for someone to dump a load of mattresses in your facility and then disappear (yes, that’s happened).
We get it.
But this creates a huge barrier in the rental process. Even very legitimate customers may decide it's not worth the extra work.
Solution
Instead of requiring the ID or other information during the rental process, have your new customer provide it in the office before they can get their gate code. Now you've made the rental process easier while still securing your facility!
A customer's trust in your business is one of the most important things you can gain, and one of the most devastating to lose.
One of the quickest ways to lose trust is to show inconsistent pricing.
If a customer sees a price, clicks on a unit, and then sees a different price during checkout, they're probably going to drop off.
No one wants to click on a $0 first month unit then pay $50 to check out.
Solution
Audit your rental process and ensure everything is transparent. It's very possible to accidentally create inconsistent prices during your rental flow when setting up discounts and checkout fees.
Make decisions based on your unique storage facility
I get it, there are a lot of good reasons operators do these things. There's no denying that!
But, some operators will make these requirements while also wondering why they aren't renting as many storage units as they need to.
Instead, choose based on your own unique needs.
The right choice is to tailor-fit your self storage facility's rental process to your unique situation.
Want to read more? Here are some other great articles!
