Smashing an all-time monthly booking record

Overview

Creating the booking platform that powers a national storage business

Storebox is an innovative, high-growth storage startup that operates 17 sites across the UK and Ireland. We partnered with them to design, build and deploy a suite of proprietary digital products which allow them to drive more business and operate all their sites completely autonomously.

Team

Peter

Ian

Izzy

Harry

Ashley

Ben Wallis - Snr PHP/WordPress developer

Ben

Tom

Services

Challenges

When Storebox first approached us their business was rapidly outgrowing their existing technology stack. With a major growth push imminent we were set the task of making Storebox a best-in-class digital player. The aim: to allow the business to run storage locations across the country completely autonomously with game-changing flexibility.

Outcomes

We designed, developed and deployed 3 bespoke digital products for Storebox: a flexible marketing site built in WordPress, a custom eCommerce booking application and an admin portal to manage orders and automation.

Smashed an all-time monthly booking record within 6 months of launch
Highest occupancy rates on record: 82% (up from 62%)
+14.5% YoY revenue increase in the first 3 months after launch

Designing tech to scale

In the first phase of the project, working in close collaboration with Storebox, we utilised a number of design sprint and technical scoping activities to clearly understand the business, its long-term goals as well as the day-to-day details. From here we went through a period of rapid iteration and collaboration with customers to prototype and test the proposed digital services.

We architected a new, flexible pricing model that allows Storebox to adjust its prices on a site-by-site, week-by-week basis. Combined with the ability to run special promotions, this has allowed Storebox to become incredibly competitive at each location – resulting in a massive uplift in occupancy rates from approx 60% to over 80% in 2020.

“I've worked closely with Harry and the team for over 2 years launching a new website and booking application for Storebox. Over the period we collaborated to deliver excellent results through UX, test and learn and implementing new features. Communication from the team was always great and their responses to urgent bugs or issues were always top class. I would recommend Unfold to any startups all the way to smaller enterprise businesses if they were looking to grow their eCommerce business or streamline their operations with new backend consoles and integrations with existing CRM, CMS and other management systems.”

Ashley Ellis
eCommerce Manager at Storebox

Automating the process

One of the key design challenges was distilling the complexity of Storebox’s operational requirements (unit allocation, assigning keys, pricing plans, flexible move-in dates and so on) into a simple and coherent journey for the customer.

On top of that challenge, we also had to automate the entire process to ensure customers could quickly and easily access their units. Our booking application handles all this complexity by providing the customers with the right details are the right time.

The end result is a far more streamlined experience for the customer, huge savings on operational overheads and less reliance on manual error-prone processes.

“Unfold were recommended to us by a trusted investor. Their ability to conceptualise and document our entire business process was extremely helpful. They were thorough and systematic in their approach but also had real design flair – a difficult combination to find! Overall very happy to have worked with Unfold and would not hesitate to recommend them to anyone looking for a professionally designed and built digital property.”

Michael Conway
CEO of Storebox

All power to the marketing department

As the first touchpoint for the customer, getting the marketing site right is a vital component for conversions. Using our expertise in user experience (UX) design, we worked with Storebox and customers to create a conversion-driven sales funnel.

Built-in the highly flexible Gutenberg block-based WordPress framework the Storebox eCommerce team also has complete control to develop and iterate the site content and layout going forward.

“The Storebox project is a perfect example of how powerful a good agency/client relationship can be. The collaboration and trust throughout the project from both teams has allowed us to create something fantastic together that’s delivering results. We can’t wait to see where it goes next!”

Harry Cobbold
Managing Director at Unfold

Centralising data to improve operations

A further frustration with the existing tech infrastructure was the incredibly fragmented nature of the data – split across a large number of applications and systems meant keeping track of everything was hard and time-consuming. As part of the project, we took time to speak to back-office staff to understand operational requirements and blockers.

Through this process and tieing in with our work on the new booking application we were able to either build faster custom solutions or integrate and automate third-party processes into a new admin site.