The Q1 2025 benchmarking report for UK storage providers has just been published. Learn how the top 11 UK storage providers perform across the digital space.
The latest Q1 2025 benchmarking report for UK storage providers has just been published. It covers the largest 11 national storage providers, including Safestore Self Storage, Big Yellow Self Storage, Access Self Storage, Shurgard Self Storage, Storage King UK, Ready Steady Store, Sentry Self Storage, easyStorage, SureStore Self Storage, UK Storage Company, and LOVESPACE.
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 takeaways, please complete the enquiry form or schedule a call.
For a glance into just 6 of the metrics we evaluated these top 11 Storage providers on, check out our quick-look table below;
Continue reading for further detail on this quarter's top and poorest-performing care home providers, or request a copy of the report for the full review.
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 underperform. 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.
Pay-Per-Click marketing is constantly evolving, with more and more advertisers being forced to hand over a lot of control to Google's algorithms as the push for automation grows ever stronger. There are still key elements of control that we have though, the main one of these being budget which is ultimately something the algorithms can't take from you. That's why being smart with your budget and ad coverage is essential to achieving strong results and bettering what your competitors have to offer.
For Q1 2025, the average budget wastage across these UK self-storage providers was £7,703 with some of the top players in the market spending a considerable amount on areas and audiences unlikely to deliver a return. We can see this in more detail when looking at the average monthly cost per cost-per-click (CPC) amongst advertisers, with the average of this metric being £53 . This highlights how competitive the market is and how important it is to control your budgets effectively. In this quarter, LOVESPACE has the highest budget wastage at £34,050, and Big Yellow Self Storage and has the lowest budget wastage at £411.
There are varying monthly ad budgets across the competitors in the report. While this gap highlights the competitive advantage that larger budgets can provide, it's not just about spending more; it’s about spending smarter. By focusing on driving efficiency in campaign management, targeting, and budget allocation, businesses with smaller budgets can still effectively compete with larger players. Investing in data-driven strategies and refining ad performance can help close the gap and maximise the return on every pound spent, enabling growth even in a competitive landscape. Relative to their spend, Safestore Self Storage have the lowest monthly cost-per-click (CPC) at £26, and UK Storage has the highest at £183.
The report highlights the importance of budget efficiency by comparing monthly ad spend with estimated CPC in relation to your competitors, see who has the highest and lowest CPC. To maximise the effectiveness of your budget, it’s essential to focus on driving CPC down while maintaining or improving campaign performance. In this report, UK Storage has the highest estimate monthly ad spend at £227,000, and both LOOKFANTASTIC.COM and Safestore Self Storage have the lowest at £2,740.
By optimising targeting, refining ad copy, and leveraging data to identify high-converting opportunities, you can ensure every click delivers maximum value. This approach not only stretches your budget further but also boosts your return on ad spend (ROAS), enabling you to achieve stronger results without simply increasing expenditure.
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. Storage providers have the benefit of not needing to host ever-changing product pages that must be maintained, which is where we see brands in e-commerce sectors struggle. However, this can mean even a small amount of errors can hold a provider back from their competition.
Safestore Self Storage reported 315 4xx errors — the highest of all self-storage providers. There are many reasons why brands should reduce their 4xx errors, as these errors can make search engines perceive them as a poorly maintained website as well as frustrating users and increasing bounce rates.
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. Storage providers will want to come across as reliable and trustworthy at every touchpoint, so a fast, easy to use site is key for not turning customers away at one of the first hurdles.
The mobile site speed for this quarter ranged between 96 and 24, with SureStore Storage flagging the slowest mobile site speed. A slow website on mobile can negatively impact the users experience and perception of a brand, as visitors expect a website to load quickly, causing them to abandon the website if that’s not the case. A slow-loading mobile website can also harm a brand’s SEO efforts, reducing visibility in search engines.
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. Working with a digital PR specialist would help storage providers identify promising backlink opportunities which, in turn, will grow their DA and increase referral traffic.
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. The DA score for this quarter ranged between 69 and 15, with Sentry Self Storage reporting the lowest DA score. This self-storage provider also received backlinks from the fewest backlinks, and they should focus on uploading quality content to encourage other websites with a similar target audience to provide backlinks.
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. With consumer behaviour changing in line with the cost of living crisis, we'd expect storage providers to be hit by a reduction in interest for their services, with potential customers choosing to either sell items they're no longer using, or store them at home if possible.
All of the providers secured an increase in organic traffic on desktop, while 3 saw a decline in traffic on mobile. There are many reasons why traffic might be less on mobile, such as websites that aren’t adopting a mobile-friendly theme and that consumers favour desktop over mobile. Given that more users access the internet for purchases via mobile for compared to desktop, they should ensure their website is easy to navigate via mobile.
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. 'Local pack' results and 'reviews' could prove to be particularly useful to storage providers, who can share information about local sites, along with reviews of their services, directly from the SERP.
Safestore Self Storage secured the most Universal Search appearances (12,104), with the majority of these coming from ‘reviews’ and then ‘images’. On the other hand, both Ready Steady Store and easyStorage reported the fewest overall appearances (65) and should ensure they’re optimising images and encourage customers to leave an online review.
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. For storage providers, they should consider targeting location-based, or size-based long tail keywords, that tie into their availability.
Big Yellow Self Store secured the most longtail keyword appearances for position 3 (2,171) and the most appearances for positions 4–10 (1,565). All providers should be utilising longtail keywords across their website, as these have a higher conversion rate than shorttail keywords and make it easier for smaller websites to stand out from their competition.
With the number of Facebook users in the United Kingdom (UK) hitting over 44 million users in 2023, 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.
We’ve included examples of SureStore Storage sponsored posts. This self-storage provider should stick to a maximum of 3 lines of text to help with scannability for 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 brand engagement, but great for Google too, who will recognise content which achieves traffic over a long period of time. Content is relevant for brands in any industry, and storage providers should be looking to create informational pieces to educate about the value of using storage facilities.
Big Yellow Self Storage has the most Facebook Likes (20,600), while UK Storage has the most Instagram followers (4,900). Brands should think of social media as a platform to build a relationship with their customer base and not just an opportunity to sell their services.
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. As storage facilities are a reasonably universal product that could be required of anyone, ensuring website accessibility is important in order to not alienate potential customers.
UK Storage flagged the most accessibility alerts (385) and the most contrast errors (117). Accessibility alerts can be distracting for neurodivergent users accessing a website as well as those with a colour vision deficiency. Reducing these alerts — such as including alt information for images and using applicable headers for pages — will help to improve the web experience for users.
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.
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