A P.O. Box Where the Address Should Be

An address that answers nothing

The contact page lists a P.O. box, an email address and a mobile number. Sometimes there is no address at all.

For a business run from home, that is often deliberate. Few owners want strangers knocking on the front door, and nobody has to publish where they live.

The trouble is what the page leaves unsaid. A visitor deciding whether to call is trying to work out whether this is a real business, nearby, still operating, with someone they will actually deal with.

A box number answers none of that, and the page offers nothing in its place.

What the visitor is trying to work out

• Is it real: a person, a workshop, actual finished jobs.
• Is it local: close enough to come out, or to visit.
• Is it still trading: recent work, current prices, a working number.
• Can I see it first: samples, a showroom or a meeting.
• Who will I deal with: a name and a face.

The second is the one a box number can make worse. Boxes are often in the next town or at a mailbox shop, so the only place named on the page may not be where the work happens.

You can keep the address private

Not publishing a home address is a reasonable choice, and the tools allow for it.

Google My Business does not accept a P.O. box as a listing address. A business that serves customers at their location can instead hide its street address and show the area it serves.

The address still has to be real, since verification usually arrives as a postcard. It simply is not shown to the public.

The website can follow the same principle: say where you work and whom you serve, without the house number.

Name the area you serve

Be specific. "Based in Langley, and working across Surrey, Abbotsford and Maple Ridge" tells a visitor more than a street address would.

List the communities by name, the way customers would say them. A map of the area served, with no pin on the house, does the same job at a glance.

It helps in search too. A page that names the places you work gives search engines something to match when people look for your service in those places.

Name only the places you actually go. A list of every town in the province reads as a trick for search engines rather than a service area.

Show real work and real people

Photographs answer the question of whether a business is real faster than any sentence can.

The owner at work, the workshop or the van, and finished jobs with the neighbourhood named in the caption. Recent dates on recent work show the business is still trading.

Stock photographs do the opposite. A smiling model in a hard hat tells a careful visitor that the real thing was not available to show.

A local number, answered

A local area code is a small, strong signal that the business is nearby. A mobile number is fine, provided the greeting names the business.

Answer it, or call back the same day. For a business with no shopfront, the phone is the front door.

A worked example

A wall bed maker builds fold-down beds and the cabinets around them in a detached workshop beside the owner's house on a quiet residential street, and installs them in condos, guest rooms and home offices across several suburbs.

The website showed a P.O. box at a mailbox shop in the next town, an email address and a mobile number.

Callers often asked first whether the business was in Canada, or whether the beds came flat-packed from a factory overseas.

Several asked whether they could see one before spending that much, and the owner explained the arrangement on the phone each time.

The new contact page names the owner's suburb and the communities served, and shows the owner at the bench and a finished bed in a client's spare room.

A line explains that the demonstration bed can be seen at the workshop by appointment, most weekday evenings and Saturdays, with a button to book a time. The box stays, labelled as the mailing address.

Callers now start with sizes and finishes rather than with whether the business exists.

Say how visits work

"By appointment" is not a weakness to hide. Said plainly, with how to book, it turns a worry into a plan.

Explain what happens: whether customers come to you, you come to them with samples, or you meet at the job. Give the days and times that are usually available.

Keep the box on the page if mail goes there, labelled as a mailing address. Labelled, it reads as an arrangement rather than a hiding place.

Other signs of a real business

Small details add up for a careful visitor: the owner's name, the year the business started, and membership of a trade association where one exists.

So do a business licence number where the municipality issues one, and a line about insurance for trades that work inside people's homes.

Reviews help most. A handful of recent ones on the Google listing, from customers in the area you name, show the business is local better than any street address.

The counter-case

A business that never meets its customers, such as an online shop shipping small items, needs less of this. A clear returns address, a phone number and recent reviews may be enough.

A business with a real commercial address should simply publish it. And an owner comfortable showing a home address, such as a farm gate stand, can.

For everyone else running a business from home, the answer is not the address. Name the area, show the work and the people, give a local number and explain how visits happen.

On the contact page

1. Label the box as a mailing address.
2. Name the area you serve in one sentence.
3. Add a local phone number near the top.
4. Show the owner at work.
5. Add recent jobs with the neighbourhood named.
6. Explain how visits work and how to book.
7. Set your Google listing to a service area.

Step six is the one that turns suspicion into confidence. A visitor who knows exactly how to see the work, and when, no longer needs a street address to believe it exists.

Why the area code on that phone number matters is covered in a toll-free number on a neighbourhood business.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.