When You’re Setting Up a Business, Did You Know You Need to Pay Attention to Your Company Email and Website?
Setting up a business means attending to what seems like a million little details. Your corporate email and website are two of those details. Don’t drop the ball on them!
But let’s start with business credit.
Business Credit
This is credit in a corporation’s name. It is not tied to the owner’s creditworthiness. Instead, biz credit scores depend on how well a company can pay its bills. Hence consumer and corporation credit scores can vary dramatically.
Wait! Don't Forget Your FREE Guide!
How new businesses can get up to $150k in business credit that's linked to their SSN with no personal credit check!
The Benefits
There are no demands for a personal guarantee. You can quickly get business credit regardless of personal credit quality. And there is no personal credit reporting of company accounts. Biz credit utilization won’t affect your consumer FICO score. Plus the owner isn’t personally liable for the debt the corporation incurs.
The Details
Getting corporate credit is not automatic. Building it requires some work. Some of the steps are intuitive, and some of them are not.
Fundability
Fundability is the current ability of a firm to get funding. Some factors are within your control. Others (like your time in business) aren’t. Your online presence and data are one area which is at or close to 100% with your control.
Business Credit, Fundability, and Business Funding Applications
The better your business credit and fundability are, the more likely you will get approval for financing. Today, let’s concentrate on your online presence, that is, your email address and your website.
Lenders Use Data to Decide on Your Application
They check information from a variety of sources, and they don’t tell you about any of them. Knowing what these secret sources measure can only help you. Understanding what matters the most makes getting a loan A LOT easier, because you know what to improve first. This information is the difference between getting an approval and getting a denial.
Lenders Use LexisNexis Information
LexisNexis is one source where many of the lenders reviewing loan applications get their information from. They offer information regarding likelihood to pay, or not. Lenders compare LexisNexis information to what you put on your loan application. If the application and LexisNexis don’t match, then, the loan providers will deny you a loan. They will see the inconsistency as fraud.
LexisNexis connects all of the data that pertains to you, both positive and negative. They have access to
- criminal records
- every email address you’ve ever used (these are your professional and personal email addresses)
- your speeding tickets
- any mortgage you have ever held
Lenders Use Online Information Including Your Business Email and Website
One place where lenders and vendors will be looking for your company is online. Even if they’re not specifically checking out your online presence, they may still need to know how to order your product or service, or where to send praise or complaints. Your online presence is where they will find that information, or not.
Your Business Email and Website: Your Website
What happens if your family member or a friend built your website? Maybe that person is talented, but corporate websites differ from personal ones. A business website needs to be easy to navigate. It needs to answer customers’ questions.
Styles differ. Wedding photographers and construction companies differ. They have dissimilar sites and design sensibilities, but they both have Contact and About pages, and information about what they do.
Make sure you own your domain, and not just your domain at Wix or WordPress or the like. You can do this by buying hosting. This is through hosting companies like GoDaddy or HostGator.
Your Business Email and Website: Your Email Address
Given that so much more of lending decisions is going on online these days, then your email address is an opportunity for your firm to puts its best foot forward. Don’t squander this easy and free opportunity! General email addresses like admin@yoursite.com tend to be best.
With a general email address, if someone leaves your employ, another employee can seamlessly take over that email address. A username like admin, webmaster, or even hello is far, far better than cutiepie or the like, even if you’re in a playful industry that caters to kids. After all, your bank and banker aren’t.
Wait! Don't Forget Your FREE Guide!
How new businesses can get up to $150k in business credit that's linked to their SSN with no personal credit check!
Your Business Email and Website: Records Congruency
Keep your records consistent! This includes your online records. LexisNexis and the SBFE (Small Business Financial Exchange) are looking at everything, so it had better match.
Inconsistent records will lead to a denial due to fraud because that’s how lenders interpret inconsistencies. This is a cause of denials which is in the owner’s hands. You have the ability to change and correct this.
This means your corporate name, address, phone number – everything! – must look the same in these places and more:
- Every place you have an online presence (your website, Yelp, SoTellUs, etc.)
- IRS records
- Company records with Dun & Bradstreet, Experian, and Equifax
- All licenses needed to run your business
- Incorporation documents
Copy/paste this information; don’t chance it with retyping.
Build Fundability on Business Credit Applications to Avoid Denials
Keep your firm looking fundable (legit) with:
- A professional website and email address
- A toll-free phone number
- List your phone number with 411
- A business address (not a PO box or a UPS box)
- Get all necessary licenses
Your Business Email and Website: Online Fundability
There are some aspects of fundability where you should pay particular attention to what’s going on online. They include:
- Firm owners listed and listed ownership uniformity
- Company name and address uniformity
- Industry aligned
- Company domain
- Information uniform on all records
Online Fundability: Business Ownership Listings
Records consistency matters here, too. Your website should show who owns your company. And that information needs to be consistent. So if the owner is named Susan Johnson on your website’s About page, then she can’t be listed as Sue Johnson on your Contact page. If your ownership changes, you need to show that here.
Business Name and Address Uniformity
Abbreviations can be your downfall here, as can punctuation like hyphens, commas, and colons. If your Contact page says your main office is on Main Street, then your About page can’t say it’s on Main St.
If you move, or you add subsidiaries and other locations, then you need to update that information everywhere. This even means whether you use your 5-digit ZIP code, or a ZIP plus 4 code (9 digits).
Fundability: Industry Alignment
If your industry is over the road trucking, then it needs to be listed that way. Pro tip: when your industry can be called several different names, like long distance trucking, mention those other phrases on your website.
Your Business Email and Website: Company Domain
When your company domain matches your company name, it helps with fundability. Pro tip: try to match what people will be searching for online, so if (for example) the word ‘brothers’ is in your company name, then determine if ‘brothers’ or ‘bros’ will be used by people searching for your company and its goods and services online.
Keep your business protected with our professional business credit monitoring.
Bonus: What Your Website Needs
Good websites can help you get funding and convert prospects to customers. While websites differ, there are some things they all need. Such as:
- Easy to use navigation – hiding important information won’t help
- Speed – if visitors have to hang around and wait for pages to load, they’ll go elsewhere
- Intuitive organization – keep your address and phone numbers on your About and Contact pages because people expect that data to be there
Your website also needs:
- Branding – if your company is known for the color green, but it’s nowhere to be found on your website, you’re losing an opportunity for connection
- Visual design – ugly websites, and those which haven’t had a design update in a decade are not conducive to enhancing your reputation or making sales
- SEO – search engine optimization means making your site easier to find. Stuffing in keywords doesn’t help with this, but writing honestly about your biz and using the kinds of terms people search for? That does
One of the more vital items your website needs is content. This can mean blogging, and it certainly means creating pages which explain what you do and what sets your biz apart from its competition. It also means a page devoted to each product you sell or service you provide. Again, you’re making it easier for your prospects to find you.
Setting Up a Business Email and Website: Takeaways
More fundable companies can get more money, and they tend to get more prospects who decide to become customers. One area of fundability you have total or near total control over is your corporate online presence. Keep it professional, uniform. and appealing, and easy to use. We can help you with even more aspects of fundability.
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