Why our Booking Portal Converts Customers
Introduction
Digital marketing in self-storage, having a social media plan and generating positive customer reviews are all very important when it comes to securing more bookings. The one thing that all these strategies have in common is that they’re all looking to bring people to your website.
Once they’ve arrived on your website, however, what can you do to increase the chances of them reserving a self-storage unit? This is where Conversion Rate Optimisation comes in and why we’ve designed our Booking Portal to maximise the return on your marketing investment.
What is conversion rate optimisation (CRO)?
Conversion Rate Optimisation is a key driving force of our software, as it’s a tied-in benefit we can offer to all of our customers. But what exactly is it? Simply put, CRO is the process of increasing the percentage of website visitors who complete a desired action on a webpage. It’s calculated by dividing the number of conversions by the number of total visitors and multiplying the result by 100 to get the percentage.
To calculate the conversion rate of a website, you can use the following formula:
Conversion Rate (%) = (Number of Conversions / Total Number of Visitors) * 100
For example, if a website had 1000 total visitors and 50 reserved a self-storage unit, the conversion rate would be:
Conversion Rate (%) = (50 / 1000) * 100 = 5%
What is a "good" conversion rate?
The average conversion rate for a typical website is currently 2.2%, however, it can vary significantly depending on several factors – including which industry you’re working in. For example, Food & Beverage providers have an average conversion rate of 3.7%, whereas Luxury Handbags convert only 0.4% of their website traffic.
With self-storage being a needs-based industry, you may feel conversion rates should be higher than average, because why would you be on a self-storage website if you didn’t intend to use the service?! However, as renting self-storage units is also a considered purchase, you may also receive traffic to your website with informational intent as opposed to transactional intent.
The channel and method with which people come to your website can also play a part in how likely they are to convert. If they’ve clicked a Google Ad for a particular search, like ‘book a self-storage unit’, or they’ve previously visited your website, it’s safe to assume they have a clearer intent to convert than if they had clicked an ad of yours from their Facebook feed, when they’re not ‘in the market’ for self-storage.
Self-storage's move towards online bookings
Recent data from the UK Self-Storage Industry Report 2024 reveals that 82% of customers now prefer to check prices and make bookings online. However, it’s surprising that 59% of UK self-storage companies still don’t allow users to reserve and pay for a unit online, with the majority that do being limited to the larger operators.
"This [data] shows the reluctance of smaller independent operators to allow customers to book units online."
Where does our software fit in this scenario? It provides self-storage operators with a powerful tool – a high-converting online booking portal that funnels as many users as possible into making an online booking.
What makes our Booking Portal convert?
Our self-storage software has been optimised to ensure that the Booking Portal self-storage operators add to their websites is built to funnel as many users as possible into making an online booking. We have employed several conversion rate optimisation tactics for our booking forms to ensure this.
Simple navigation
For your homepage and other landing pages on your website to rank well in search engines and draw people to your website, they need to be full of information, images and useful content that people want to engage with.
When it comes to booking forms however, that are further down the funnel, should be more geared towards conversion optimisation (less text, fewer images, designed for users to pass through the steps quickly). They’re not designed to rank on Search engines as people searching for things like “self-storage near me” aren’t going to click on a booking page first.
Our simple layout and straightforward flow is key to converting those you’ve brought to your website. By reducing the amount of unnecessary or distracting elements on your booking pages, users are more likely to focus on the main task at hand, reducing the likelihood of users abandoning the page due to frustration or confusion.
Technical requirements met
Like every user-facing product we build, our booking portal is designed for fast loading and mobile optimisation, ensuring that users can easily access and navigate it on their mobile devices.
The expectation of users on your website is that they can make purchases in a time and place and on a device of their choosing. Being able to provide a seamless user experience across all platforms is fundamental to ensuring you’re receiving as many online bookings as possible.
Catching potential drop-offs
High occupancy rates or consistently low unit availability can hurt your conversion rates. If you’ve no units to rent then people will likely drop-off your website when they discover this.
That’s why we have a lead generation form for units that are currently unavailable, letting people register their interest and making sure you still get the lead. You can find out more on our other blog post about protecting future bookings from high occupancy levels.
Insights & analysis
Part of understanding how you can convert more customers is by looking into who your current customers are, but it’s as important to look at who doesn’t convert on your website, and why.
Thankfully, there are already powerful tools out there that can help you capture and analyse this information, like Google Analytics 4, which allows you to track the actions of users on your website. This is why we’ve made it both easy to integrate your Booking Portal with tracking tools like this and simple to map out each step in the funnel. This means you see exactly how far along users that don’t convert get to before they decide to drop-off.
For each step in the booking process: choosing their unit, adding their personal details, saving their card details and finalising the booking, the page URL the user is on updates. Google Analytics can then tell you where in your funnel most people drop-off.
Perhaps your pricing is putting people off, or maybe the descriptions of your different unit sizes need better explanations. We make sure you’ve got as much data as possible to make an informed decision on any changes you think may improve the likelihood someone will reserve a self-storage unit from you.
Conclusion
By investing in a high-converting online booking form that allows customers to make a payment and reserve their unit, self-storage operators can give their business a significant boost. As the UK industry report shows, this technology is already being used by larger operators to generate as many new customers as possible. However, with its quick set up and the ability to plug on to any established self-storage website, adding a Booking Portal is something that an operator of any size should consider!
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