Westwood, KS – March 7, 2011 – The National Self Storage Alliance was founded to allow independent self storage operators the ability to market at a level to compete with the largest operators in the industry under a unified brand. With a new partnership, the not-for-profit self storage marketing cooperative has taken a step in leveling the playing field with the self storage industry's giants.
National Self Storage launched a new website this week, one of the first sites designed and operated by WebWorks, a new self storage marketing service.
Red Nova Labs, the company that created StorageFront and Self Storage Marketing Ahead, created WebWorks to assist self storage companies with website design, sophisticated development, content management tools, SEO services and web marketing consulting on an ongoing basis.
"The new battleground is the Internet, and the publically-traded companies and larger operators have the dollars and resources available to them to really dominate that market,” said Travis Morrow, National Self Storage Alliance President/CEO. "So our goal was to get a website that technologically was able to compete with them. We want to allow independent operators the ability to have a website that's just as powerful as the giant down the street from them, but they don't have to spend the millions of dollars.”
What has made WebWorks so enticing to companies like the National Self Storage Alliance is the affordability of the service. Red Nova Labs does not charge for the design of the site and also provides several features for free, such as its self storage space calculator.
"We need to perform and earn our keep beyond good web design, which means delivering leads,” said Dan Miller, CEO at Red Nova Labs. "That's what sets us apart—that and two solid years of singular focus on the storage industry.”
In order to deliver leads, one of the main WebWorks' initiatives is to improve its customer's search engine optimization (SEO). Morrow said improved SEO will be the best benefit to his company.
"The old site was constructed poorly from an SEO standpoint and needed to be redone,” Morrow said. "We had a lot of features we liked on that site, but from SEO standpoint, it just wasn't up to par where it needed to be to capture the local search terms that Google is looking for now.”
The new website is built not just with SEO in mind, but it is also geared to be user-friendly. Along with the popular storage calculator, the redesign also included Google Maps of the National Self Storage facilities with the company's shield as each land marker, site slideshows on the facility pages, and a list of storage tips.
From a backend standpoint, WebWorks has created a site that is easy to use and allows the user to create new content, such as the ability to upload video tours.
"What we provide the client is complete control over their own site, no more long waits for simple content changes or hourly fees from designers to make changes,” said Tom Cox, WebWorks' Web Visibility Manager. "Owners can edit and change the content on their website as easy as they can a word document, along with the ability to add, remove and change facilities in an instant.”
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