How do you show your customers that there’s a special rate available?
Whether it’s a first-month discount or just a discounted rate meant to last until their first rent increase, self storage discounts can help you get more rentals. They’re most effective if customers can see that they’re getting a deal, so you need a way to help online shoppers visualize these discounts on your self storage website.
Strikethrough pricing is the solution, and a StoragePug website can help you nail it.
Strikethrough pricing puts a line—and sometimes dims—the text of a product's original price and places the new price somewhere beside it.
Not only is this an effective way to show discounted rates at your self storage facility, but it’s also a method that consumers are used to.
Even Amazon makes use of strikethrough pricing. And considering Amazon is the largest online retailer around, you can bet that means strikethrough pricing is a visual that your customers will understand.
Self storage discounts are an effective way of enticing customers to rent.
So, what are the actual benefits of strikethrough pricing for your self storage facility, and how does it improve the effectiveness of your discounts?
The main reasons to use strikethrough pricing for self storage websites are clarity and urgency.
Strikethrough pricing is an understandable display method that clearly shows the customer what the original price is and what deal they’re getting. It’s a much clearer method to display a discount compared to posting statements like “10% off” or “save $50.”
While the latter is easier math to do than the 10% off, it’s still extra work you’re asking your customer to do before they know what their deal is. It’s important to tell the customer the discount in many cases, but even then, you should pair it with strikethrough pricing so that your customers can see the actual price at a glance and compare it to the base price.
This method of displaying self storage discounts on your site also creates urgency in customers.
A discount can be temporary, and seeing the original price might influence a customer to rent now before the discount becomes unavailable.
How often do you see a less expensive product and think, “there must be a reason it’s cheaper than the other one”?
This is a common philosophical element in a buyer’s journey. While people often want a less expensive product, they’re also sensitive to matters of quality. A cautious customer that places quality over cost may well opt for a higher cost in a gamble to ensure higher quality.
Strikethrough pricing allows you to hit both targets with your self storage customers.
Even if your self storage discount brings your storage units below the price of competitors, the original price is still visible. This allows customers to know what the original price was and consider it in their presumptions of quality instead of the discounted rate.
If your original rate is $115 and the discounted rate is $80, they can imagine the quality of a $115 storage unit and enjoy the prospect of getting that for only $80. This a much more enticing deal than, say, a storage unit that is advertised at $70 flat without strikethrough pricing.
Many websites can do strikethrough pricing. It’s a visual effect, and part of its usefulness is in its simplicity.
At StoragePug, we take it a step further via SiteLink API integration. This means that we pull data directly from SiteLink to automatically adjust rates—including discount and strikethrough rates—on your self storage website.
One of the newest ways to do this is via SiteLink’s addition of web rates. Web rates are intended to create a special rate for online renters, thus enticing them to rent when they find your website rather than waiting to come in person, potentially getting lost to a competitor in the time between. This also means less work for your managers on-site, allowing them to spend their precious time on other administrative and maintenance-oriented tasks.
Because we can pull information directly from SiteLink’s API, StoragePug draws in your web rates—and other rates as applicable—and applies them to your unit pricing. This is a major benefit if you use SiteLink as your self storage property management software.
The lowest price available is displayed to the customers with the original rate struck through beside it.
Strikethrough pricing is an effective method for displaying your self storage discounts because it benefits everyone involved.
For customers, they are able to see the original cost of a unit and get the satisfaction of seeing that they’ve found a deal and been an effective shopper.
For self storage facilities, you are able to create urgency to convert a lead and state your quality while still offering a lower cost.
If you’re going to offer discounts—whether that’s as short-term as a first-month special or as long-term as a web rate—strikethrough pricing is the best way to display them.
And with a website that integrates with SiteLink’s API, SiteLink customers have it easier than ever to set these rates on their website!
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At StoragePug, we build self storage websites that make it easy for new customers to find you and easy for them to rent from you.
