Five things that every home-based business needs

Launching a business from home cuts down on the hassle of several things – commercial rents, management of staff and transport woes, to name a few.

However, there are several vital things you need to put in place if your home office is to run effectively.

We spoke to the experts to find out the five key things that every home-based business needs.

To see each tip, click on the tabs below.

1. Domain name

If you’re working from home, it’s likely that the primary marketing and interaction tool you’ll have with potential customers is your website.

Therefore, it’s crucial that you have a website that ranks well, states its purpose clearly, is easy to navigate and fulfils either a direct sale or provides a clear pathway for an offline one.

The first step to this is a domain name. You need to hit keywords that sum up your business, but you also need to keep it fairly snappy – think Amazon, Google and so on.

Your domain name will help build trust – you need an ABN for a .com.au domain name, so this should be your first target.

“Google recognises this and trusts it more,” says online entrepreneur Fred Schebesta. “Other countries don’t have this requirement, so it’s harder for spammers to use a .com.au site.”

“Suffixes such as .info and .biz are a little salubrious and known for spam. Anything with hyphens doesn’t look good, either.”

“Ideally, you want to keep your domain under seven characters. If someone asks for your website and you tell them something that’s 15 characters long, there’s no chance they will remember it.”

Further reading: Top five tips to choosing the right domain name.