The Top 5 Conversion Killers for Self Storage Websites

When we think about the best self storage websites, we start with a simple belief: the primary job of a self storage website is to convert traffic that’s ready to rent into paying renters.

There are plenty of features a website can have—virtual tours, value based pricing, upsells, integration with management software, custom reporting—and many of them are nice to have. Some even support conversion indirectly. But if anything is going to be sacrificed, it should never be conversion rate. A self storage website that doesn’t rent units is failing its core job.

Top Influences on Conversion Rate

Conversion is influenced by a number of factors outside of the website’s control—most importantly price and proximity to the renter. Those will always have the biggest impact. But what the website can control is how a user experiences your brand, how simple the unit selection journey feels, and how smooth the checkout process is. That’s where the difference is made online.

That said, most sites don’t fail because they lack fancy features. What we see more often are a handful of common mistakes that quietly kill conversions. Today we’re going to look at the five most common conversion killers we encounter online, and what a solution looks like for each. Let’s count them down from #5 to #1.

#5: Unit Feature Roulette

Most operators know how powerful value-based pricing can be for boosting revenue, and from the customer’s perspective this plays out as feature-based unit selection.  But when a user doesn't get feature based unit selection we call this "unit selection roulette" because while renters know what size they’re selecting, they don’t know what other features they’ll get—they’re just hoping for the best. Size alone doesn’t close the deal—renters care about things like climate control, being on a lower floor, or proximity to a door.

The best sites let customers decide what’s more important to them: a lower price with less convenience, or paying more for features that save steps and hassle. Some renters don’t want to haul heavy furniture across the facility and will gladly pay more for proximity to a door or loading dock. Others care less about convenience and more about getting the lowest price. Too many sites still make renters gamble on what they’ll get instead of letting them choose the features they actually value.

Fix: Give customers the ability to filter and select a unit based on the features that matter most to them.

#4: Confusing Unit Lists

This one is super common with most major software providers and their off‑the‑shelf sites. The unit selection process is often like searching for a needle in a haystack. Renters are faced with a long list of units that are hard to tell apart, and that makes it difficult to pick the right one. They’re often ordered smallest to largest, which is great, and sometimes every unit is listed instead of just one per size, which makes it even harder.

Online, many renters aren’t entirely sure which size they need anyway, and a giant list just adds confusion. The best sites guide visitors through choosing a size, helping them find what they need without forcing them to fight through the noise to find the signal. Unit sizes matter, but presenting them in this overwhelming way presents conversion challenges.

Fix: Simplify the presentation. Help customers find their size with a click, not endless scrolling.

#3: Broken or Overloaded Forms

There are two directions we often see forms go in. When someone selects a unit, they’re either given a form that requires way too much effort, or they run into a form that feels disconnected from the checkout process. In the first case, it isn’t that the information is unnecessary—move-ins require a lot of details—but the balance between length and presentation matters. A long form presented simply can still work, but when it feels like a DMV form with endless repeated fields, people abandon.

On the other end, we see sites where a clean unit selection process suddenly leads to a basic contact form. Renters have to type in the unit size and dates, which feels disconnected and leaves them wondering if the unit they selected really exists. When the website feels this messy, customers begin to doubt the move-in experience itself.

Fix: Keep forms short, collect just enough to start the move-in, keep it connected to the move-in process, and collect extra details later at move-in.

#2: Checkout Redirects to Another Domain

This one is a little tricky because it often happens as a workaround. A business wants a nice new website, but they can’t fully integrate it with the management software that controls checkout. So renters pick a unit on the polished website, but when they’re ready to move in, they get redirected to the software’s checkout page.

That page is often on a different domain, and often looks outdated, so it can feel like a bait‑and‑switch. Renters wonder if their credit card is safe, and they have to double‑check that the unit and location are still the ones they selected. Even if everything is technically secure, the perception of risk kills conversion.

Fix: Keep the rental process on your domain. If you must redirect, match branding and messaging so the experience feels seamless.

#1: Outdated, Trust-Killing Design

Out of all the common mistakes we see, the one with the highest impact on conversion rate is a dated, broken, or clunky design. Everybody knows it, and everybody online talks about it—it’s table stakes for a website. But we still see it a lot. When your site looks unprofessional, renters hesitate to trust it with their credit card—and by extension, the security of their belongings. In self storage, a dilapidated or outdated site communicates much like a dilapidated facility: it doesn’t feel secure, and customers question whether their payment details or material things will be safe. It’s the minimum requirement for a website that’s meant to rent units.

Fix: A modern, polished design is table stakes. It doesn’t just make your site pretty—it makes your business trustworthy.

The Bottom Line

Price may be the #1 driver of move-ins, but your website should never be the reason you lose a customer who’s already ready to rent. By avoiding these five mistakes, you ensure your site does the one job it can’t afford to fail at: converting ready-to-rent visitors into paying customers.