A business address is the official headquarters of a business. They may be the actual place where business is conducted, a mailbox, or virtual headquarters to add legitimacy to the business. Regardless of whether your address is a real place of business or not, the last thing you want is to have a business that’s linked to a residential address, as it makes you look like an unprofessional, non-established upstart to potential clients.

Here’s a list of the various types of business addresses you can get:

Sole proprietor address

These people may use their home addresses, but this isn’t ideal. In this situation, it’s best to source from a third party address provider for a suitable business address to use. Such may include mail receiving providers such as UPS, Mail Boxes Etc, or a virtual office provider.

Limited company address

The address needs of a limited companies are completely different from a sole proprietorship. The various options a limited company should consider when using a business address include;

• Trading address: This is a location a business trades from. It may include a single trading address or a multiple ones when the business has multiple branches.
• Shipping address: This type of address is one that is most used by courier or postal services. In this case, outsourcing a third-party professional mailbox service is most useful.
• SAIL address: SAIL is an acronym for single alternative inspection location address. This is a type of address to use when company management are not easily accessible due to being scattered throughout a state, country, or internationally.
• Registered office address: Just as the name suggests, this is an address that’s used to register a company when incorporating. Usually a virtual office is used, as many governments do not allow the use of a simple mailbox service for tax purposes.

Now that we’ve examined the various types of business addresses, let’s examine the benefits of using a business address for your company.

1. Helps in creating trust, confidence, and rapport between the company and the client

A company that has no business address seems fishy to most clients and customers, and can be a big turnoff. It makes you look unprofessional compared to competitors, and will also create the concern that you won’t be easy to contact if a customer has issues with their purchase. Having a business address is one of the first steps in winning a customer’s trust and confidence

2. Personal privacy

Using your personal home address as a business address isn’t just unprofessional and concerning to customers. It can also bring clients directly to your home, which isn’t ideal for a number of reasons. Not only does this move help to keep your personal residence private, but also serves the purpose of ensuring personal security for sensitive business transactions. As an added advantage it helps make your business look established.

3. Modern day SEO reasons

Living in the modern digitally-driven world requires lots of technical savvy and good website SEO. For this very reason, it is important to list a business address on your website for SEO reasons. This makes it easy for clients to find your business when performing a google search.

4. Provides a place to meet clients and service providers

This might be the most relevant and oldest purpose of having a business address. The address serves for the purpose of meeting a client one on one and having face to face conversations on critical issues. For those businesses that have no official residence to meet a client, the use of a virtual office or co-working space comes in handy. These shared environments are mostly used by startups trying to get on their feet.

Conclusion

As you can see, there are a variety of options when it comes to getting a business address, aside from renting or purchasing an official brick and mortar address. Not all businesses can afford, or justify the cost of the aforementioned option due to budget or the nature of how and where they do business on a daily basis.