The Q1 2023 benchmarking report for UK Storage providers has just been published. Learn how the top 9 UK Storage providers perform across the digital space.
The latest Q1 2023 benchmarking report for UK Storage providers has just been published. It covers the largest 9 national Storage providers, including Safestore, Big Yellow, Access, Shurgard, Lok’nStore, Storage King, Ready Steady Store, Sentry & easyStorage.
The research gives an inside track on who is winning the biggest share of voice online, and quantifies the gaps, risks and missed opportunities for other storage providers to win brand exposure locally, yield online enquiries, and ultimately let out units through digital performance. The report highlights quick wins that will improve enquiries from your online strategy and identifies the barriers that may be reducing your site’s ability to optimise digital performance.
To see a preview and contents page of the Q1 report, click here. To get a copy of the full report and the key take-aways, please complete the enquiry form or schedule a call.
The 70+ pages of research benchmarks each retailer based on 50+ metrics and indicators of successful digital strategy, including organic visibility, domain authority, paid media ads, conversion performance, technical performance, site speed, universal search, content, social ads, accessibility, and mobile performance.
Some of the leading players in the space are high spenders on paid media channels such as Google, Bing & Facebook - but have a poor or sub-optimal conversion improvement strategy. Without an optimised, sophisticated conversion strategy that maximises the conversion rate, the return on investment is unsustainable or will under-perform. Scaling spend on paid media is not achievable unless the conversion rate delivers optimal performance in the sector. Some in the space have paid media spend levels from 30k+ per month but dedicate minimal resources and budgets to conversion testing. Given the cost per clicks on ad networks will continue to rise, we recommend spending at least 10% of your paid media budget on ongoing conversion optimisation testing schedules to ensure your paid media ROI maintains long term viability, competitive advantage, and sustainability.
Savvy digital marketers know that having a technically sound website is an essential component of a successful fully integrated digital strategy - plus a site capable of maximising conversion performance.
All nine of the storage providers had website errors, producing at least some 4xx or 5xx error codes in our crawls. Safestore are seeing the worst level of 4xx error codes, with 58. Though this figure isn't as high as we see in other sectors, such as eCommerce brands, Safe Store still need to be looking into the cause of these errors and ensuring potential customers aren't being blocked from seeing key pages.
When 62% of consumers are less likely to convert if they have a negative mobile site experience, ensuring that your site is quick and easy to load makes a significant improvement on your overall conversion rates.
We would expect most to achieve at least an ‘okay’ score of 50-89, whereas only six of the nine storage providers did. The mobile page speed scores are currently between 31 and 87, with Storage King leading the way. The three companies that are scoring below 50 have some serious work to do on improving their mobile page speed.
Domain authority is an essential metric for measuring the effectiveness of SEO performance and helps create a reliable overall gauge of how effective your site is at achieving organic traffic, i.e. ‘free’ traffic that isn’t gained through sponsored ads.
A ‘good’ DA really comes down to how your competitors are performing, however, it’s generally considered average between 40 and 50, good between 50 and 60, and excellent above 60. Only four of the companies achieved a score of average or above, with the DA ranging from 14 to 69. Sentry are scoring the lowest of all nine providers. Those at the lower end of the scale need to be focusing on building a stronger backlink profile to compete with the higher-scoring providers.
A strong organic performance is strategically important as it ensures your site ranks above competitors for key, transactional keywords. When 93% of your customers won’t go past the first page of Google, your absence or lack of targeting for essential keywords will cost you conversions.
We looked at how all nine storage providers have performed compared to last year. Continuous improvement and optimisation is needed to secure traffic year after year. We discovered that only three of the storage providers in our report have gained organic mobile traffic year on year. Big Yellow saw the biggest loss with a 37% drop, whilst easyStorage saw the biggest gain with a 41% increase.
Google Universal Search Results is an evolving opportunity to make your pages visible on a SERP (Search Engine Results Page). Universal results often appear before traditional listings and are eye-catching for users. Universal search results refer to rankings on a SERP that are not the traditional ‘blue line’ Google link, and a retailer can appear for universal search results without being strong in standard rankings.
We could see that Reviews were the highest used universal search feature, with Safestore taking the top spot reaching 4,300 results. All nine companies are underusing all universal search feature options, with some only seeing a handful of results. Those getting a small amount of results need to work towards the numbers their competitors are achieving.
Longtail keywords are often considered high intent and potentially more likely to convert as a searcher is being more specific. Optimising for longtail keywords also puts your content strategy in a strong position to rank for retailer new search terms as they enter Google’s index.
Sentry rank for a significantly low number of longtail keywords compared to their competitors, with very few longtail keywords ranking in the top 20. Sentry should be looking at how to improve their rankings on existing longtail keywords, but also at how they can expand their strategy to include new specific search terms.
With the number of Facebook users in the United Kingdom (UK) forecast to hit over 42 million users by 2022, it is not surprising that companies have jumped at the opportunity to advertise on the social media platform. Facebook’s UK digital advertising revenue has been estimated to have breached 2.6b GB pounds in 2019.
Below, we can see examples of Ready Steady Store's Facebook ads. The contrasting colours and recognisable logo make the ads eye-catching to scrolling social media users.
When it comes to social media and on-site content strategies, it is important to release content that has a longer shelf life. An article is considered 'Evergreen' if it has maintained its relevancy to an audience for longer. It's great for your retailer engagement, but great for Google too, who will recognise content which achieves traffic over a long period of time.
We saw in our research that many of the sleep brands are falling behind on content creation. We can see that Shurgard are lagging in content over 2022, when compared with their competitors. This is a missed opportunity for these brands, who could be sharing content and information about special offers.
20% of people in the UK have a disability – 2 million of which are people living with sight loss. In addition, 1 in 12 men and 1 in 200 women have some degree of colour vision deficiency. When websites are not designed to meet these needs, retailers lose customer interest as they turn elsewhere.
All of the Storage providers appear to be struggling with accessibility within their sites, with all nine seeing an array of errors, contrast errors and alerts. easyStorage are showing the worst amount, with 109 contrast errors on their website. All nine storage providers should be reviewing and optimising their accessibility, especially with the number of errors and alerts across the board, these need to be investigated to see what the issues within their websites are.
For a glance into just 6 of the metrics we evaluated these top 9 Storage providers on, check out our quick-look table below;
To get a copy of the full report, please complete the enquiry form. If you want to talk to us about accelerating your digital performance, please call us on 01543 410014 or schedule a call with Mike Movassaghi.
Photo by Steve Johnson on Unsplash