RSSMake Your Home Based Business More Professional
Working from home can create the stigma that your company is not only less than professional, but an all out scam. You know that you’re legitimate, but how can you convey that to your potential customers?
Two of the best ways are some of the most basic methods. These are simple, affordable and easy to implement. You will want to make sure that you have a professional web presence and a business phone. If you have these, it will communicate professionalism at a glance to your customers. This is essential; it is very hard to overcome bad first impressions.
Your web presence is based almost entirely from your website. It should be clean, organized, and look professional. When you begin to make it, be certain not to use the any basic template, instead you’ll want to use one that is custom built to suit your business needs. There are several companies that offer custom built sites for relatively low rates. Host Gator, Blue Host, justhost.com, Host Monster, iPage, FatCow, myhosting.com and others. These are just some of the many companies that are out there. You don’t have to use these exclusively, you are free to go find another company on your own. Remember that presentation is important.
Once you have built your site, remember that you will want a professional, secure, and effective transaction portal. One of the best services out there is Paypal. Its a great service that you can easily use, and integrate, into your site. People trust Paypal and it offers professional services for good prices. The Paypal service that you’ll want to use is Business service, especially if your business from home is expanding or already getting a lot of customers and traffic. It will ask you to customize which service you will be using. Just select which service best fits your home based business and go with it. It may sound like you’re putting up a lot of cash for this, but remember, that the investment that you put in will be worth the confidence that you gain from your potential customers.
While you are working on making your site as professional as possible, remember that there are more aspects to making your home based business more professional. The second tip comes from my childhood. When my dad was laid off a second time I was about 12. He decided to go into business for himself. He worked in media productions for online businesses and used our home office as his personal office for working from home. He economized as much as he could (times were tough then) and decided to use our home line as his business line. He told us about it, but when there are 5 kids, including teenage girls, something is bound to go wrong. It did. I’m pretty sure that when I answered the call I thought was from my girlfriend, that my dad’s client wasn’t too impressed. We had a family council that night on phone etiquette, followed by some groundings (I wasn’t the only one, as I recall. My sisters got into a pretty big fight about who was going to get another call, while they were holding the phone off the hook, I think we were grounded for a week).
The moral of the story? Don’t use your home phone as your business line. While you, like my dad, may be trying to economize, the potential losses aren’t worth it and there plenty of cheap, reliable, alternatives to using your home phone. Google Voice is one of these alternatives. It used to be that you had to get an invite to use Google Voice, but not anymore. You can sign up for free and customize your number. You will also get incredibly cheap rates internationally, and through the end of 2011, you can get free calling inside the US. You won’t be using a traditional handset for your interface, so you may want to invest in a headset with microphone that is compatible with your computer.
Another great alternative that is very inexpensive is Magic Jack. It costs $40 dollars the first year, and then $20 each successive year. The concept is fairly simple. MagicJack uses VoIP technology to allow you to have a traditional phone and phone number without any monthly bill. You get free local and long distance calls, international calls as low as $0.02 a minute, free voicemail, free call waiting, and free caller ID. They also offer a free trial, which will ship to your house in one day. There are also other great services, such as Vonage, that are worth looking into. Just be sure to do your research on each of these methods before you purchase, just so you are sure about what you are doing.
Make sure that when you get a business phone call that you don’t answer it in the same room as your crying (or worse, arguing) children. That will detract immeasurably from your aura of professionalism. Make sure that you can set your home office up in a separate room. That will help you to focus on your work, shut out distractions, and keep track of your finances and documents better.
Don’t forget about getting a voicemail service that will give the users a menu and different options so that you can automatically handle different requests. You may want to have options for sales, shipping, customer service, and different consulting areas. You may also want to seriously think about getting a fax machine or a fax service. eFax is one of these services that works very well and adds credibility to your business. If you are not able to add a tertiary line for a fax, eFax or a similar service is critical because you won’t have to give up your line and you’ll still get faxes.
Do your research, figure out what your needs are, and make the changes as soon as possible. You’ll reap large rewards for improving your site and adding a separate line for your business. Let’s make some money online!
Filed Under: Home Based Business
August 4, 2011 at 5:40 pm |
Well put, sir, well put. I’ll cetranily make note of that.
August 5, 2011 at 7:33 pm |
Learning a ton from these neat articles.