Life Storage Partner Experience
Developing a User Experience Portal for a Recognized Storage Leader
Deliverables.
Background
Life Storage helps hundreds of thousands of customers with their storage needs. They are a recognized leader with more than 950 locations across the country. Life Storage’s business model utilizes third party property owners to finance their various locations. These partners are high net worth individuals who want to increase the size of their investment and delegate location management.
Life Storage recognizes the importance of these partners, so they nurtured prospects by hosting seminars to educate interested individuals about the business. These seminars covered finances, marketing, and other services that supported the operations and investment of the investor. These seminars were held in-person at their corporate headquarters, until COVID-19 impacted the world.
Life Storage understood that simply moving the seminars to Zoom proved to be unsuccessful, as participation in the seminars waned. Having an in-person seminar has a vastly different atmosphere than sitting in front of a computer for hours on end. Life Storage knew it needed to be creative with their solution, they just weren’t sure what that was.
How We Helped
When Life Storage approached us with this problem, we brainstormed together to find a potential solution. We decided that they needed to create an enjoyable partner experience through self-navigation, streamlined communication, engagement, and simplicity. This way, prospects would not just sit in front of a computer, they would be actively involved in the learning process. The learning material would be broken down into chapters and allow users to go at their own pace.
We worked alongside the Vice President of Program Management to develop a User Experience Portal. The project started through wireframe development to map and document the user experience. We needed to ensure that all needs were met and guided in a meaningful way. We built the site in WordPress so that routine updates were easy for the client to make as needed. Throughout the design process, we referred to Life Storage’s brand guidelines to ensure consistency.
When we built this portal, we kept Life Storage’s employees in mind. The system generates notifications, alerting Life Storage staff when a user has completed various sections, so that appropriate follow ups can occur. The site also allowed users to ask questions throughout the seminar and easily connect with a member of Life Storage. Lastly, the portal was made with granular user permissions and control to enhance security.
After we made the portal, we worked with the client to develop video content. We helped write scripts, and captured footage over a 2 day, on-location shoot. Additionally, the portal was built to easily allow the client to add internally created video content themselves.
Once the portal was launched in Spring of 2021, our client presented the new portal to Life Storage’s Board of Directors. The board members were thrilled with the result, especially since no other self storage company offered a platform like this. This project with Life Storage perfectly represents the purpose of Renoun Creative: to solve complex problems with a simple and effective solution.
