By David Austin

ore leads will see your website than will ever see your front office. Is your website ready to turn them into customers?

Websites come in a huge array of complexities, with widely differing features, and it’s hard to pin down which features are going to matter to your customers. When you start building your website, or when you start shopping around for a professional one, keep your eye on the ball: Is your website renting units?

Additional features, like online bill payment, autopay, account management, security codes, etc., are all great. Your customers might expect your website to have these features, and if they do, then you should certainly offer them. But the primary goal of your website, just like with your front office and the rest of your business, is to rent storage units.

To see if your website is working for you, we can trace the path a customer takes between clicking your website and renting a unit (or not).

Humans form opinions frighteningly fast. When you meet someone new, when you enter a restaurant, and when you first click into a website, you take in your surroundings and start to form your opinion of the place in less than half a second.

In the first few seconds, your website must build trust.

Does the website look up to date or like it was built in the 90s? Does it look professional? Is the design clean and easy to understand, or is it cluttered and busy?

And what about the photos? Your website must showcase your very best photos to take advantage of this first moment of opinion-forming. Consider using a drone flyover video, if you can swing it, that shows a degree of professionalism while also making your facility look great.

The more quality photos you add, the better. Take photos of your facility from the street so prospective customers can recognize where you are when they come in. Take photos of your security features (your gate, your fence, your cameras, etc.). Take photos of your signage, your front office, and your rental truck (if you have one).

Get photos of individual storage units. Show photos of your amenities, like unit alarms, dollies and carts, or even the free coffee you offer in the office. Anything you mention in your self-storage marketing deserves to have a good photo on your website.

Why? Because photos can help build trust. If you’ve never heard of a brand, do you take their claims at face value? When you’re shopping on Amazon, would you buy an item that didn’t have a picture?

Storage customers are the same. If they’re shopping for storage online, they want to see what they’re buying. They want to see whether your facility is clean, the lot is paved or gravel, or the fence has gaping holes in it.

Of course, photos aren’t immune to, how should I put it, marketing flair. Customers know you’ve chosen the best photos, so to further build trust you need to showcase reviews from real customers.

Reviews are the single best way to build trust online because they’re the only way to offer social proof that your business is trustworthy. Everyone reads reviews before making a purchase, and reviews are one of the major ways Google decides which websites to show searchers.

The shopper who found your website is going to be looking for reviews, either on Google, on your site, or elsewhere. If your website can answer all their questions and give them the reviews they’re seeking, you can control the narrative and put your best foot forward.

If you don’t have a program in place to generate tons of reviews, get one. A five-star review on Google could be worth hundreds of dollars of other marketing efforts.

In summary, your website must build trust by:

• Looking professional
• Showcasing photos and videos
• Highlighting reviews

If you can check all those boxes, your website will build enough trust that the shopper who clicked in will consider you a good option for their business.

We’re three whole seconds into the customers’ journey, but they’ve nearly made up their minds!

The next thing your website needs to be able to do is educate your visitors.

With a quick glance through your photos and web design, the customer has decided if you’re a good option, but they don’t know if you have what they need.

Part of this, in self-storage, is that the customer frequently doesn’t know what they need. Our customers don’t want a storage unit; they want somewhere to put their extra stuff. A storage unit is just the most convenient solution.

A new renter probably doesn’t know if they need climate control. They may not know what “climate control” even means for a storage unit. They won’t know how much space they need, what type of amenities to ask about, or even how facility access works.

The customer might call if they have questions, but they might not. Don’t take the chance. The content on your website should focus on how you can solve their problem.

Just saying climate control isn’t enough. Tell your customers what that means and why they might need it. If you can give them storage space that is safe, teach them how you keep it safe. Your photos and videos are part of this step, too; they can answer questions like “Is the facility safe at night?” with a photo of your bright lighting.

Every facet of your facility should be framed as a way to solve a problem. No one is renting storage because they’re bored; everyone has a problem, and they need you to solve it. Tenants (usually) don’t care about the specs of your amenities or how cool your tech is. They want to know if that amenity will fix their problem.

This step bleeds into the last: turning browsers into renters.

If your website has done the first two steps properly, the last step is incredibly simple.

Once you’ve established that the customer can trust you, you’ve answered all their questions, and you’ve shown how you can solve their problems, all you have to do is get out of their way.

Make it as easy as possible for the shopper to rent a unit. Focus on clarity and simplicity. Use a “RENT NOW” button to take them to your available storage units. Once they choose a unit, get the rental done in as few steps as possible.

Every additional step you put in the rental flow will reduce your conversion rate. For some operators, adding a lease-signing step or an ID upload step might be worth it, but for others, they want the maximum conversion rate possible.

The fewer clicks it takes to rent, the better. Of course, there will still be steps you have to complete in person unless you do entirely online rentals (which is a topic for another time). Once the customer has paid for a unit, the rest is just bookkeeping.

A good self-storage website must build trust, educate, and convert.

Be sure your website is full of high-quality photos of your facility, your amenities, and especially your security features. Highlight reviews to help your shoppers feel that your business is going to treat them right.

Tell your customer how each of your amenities can solve their problems, and show them why renting with you is the best solution for their lack of storage space. Help them find the best option for their needs (not necessarily the one that makes you the most money).

Then, make it as easy as possible for a shopper to become a renter. If you can nail those three steps, your website can bring you new tenants without you having to lift a finger.