Young entrepreneurs in England looking to finance a new business should investigate the UK government’s Start-Up Loans program. Previously available only to people between the ages of 18 and 24 living in Britain, the government recently increased the age limit for applicants to 30.
Start-Up loans are available to anyone in the UK with a business in its initial phase. The average loan size is approximately £2,500, but the final amount is determined by the company’s business plan and there is no definite limit. The Start-Up loan is a personal loan, so all of the young entrepreneurs involved in a UK start-up can apply for individual loans to invest in the company. In addition to the loan, young entrepreneurs participating in the program also receive business support and mentoring, regardless of where the company is in its business cycle.
If you’re going to start your own company, you’ll want to create a professional, functional website; it’s your company’s public presence and the best way to attract customers. You have to build a great website, one that will capture visitors and convert them into customers, one that offers complete information about your company and, if necessary, enables transactions. In today’s hyper-competitive, wired business environment, chances are you’ll have a website before you have an office. According to Glenn Shoosmith, in his 19 October 2012 article for The Guardian, “Why your business needs a website”:
Harnessing the web as a business tool is important, even for businesses that may consider themselves as primarily offline. Beauty businesses, fitness businesses, plumbers, driving instructors and any number of other service businesses ultimately all measure success by their ability to build offline relationships – and the web can play a huge part in that. So no matter how established your business is offline, it’s crucial to get the basics of online in place.
As a small business, it’s unlikely you’ll have big budgets, staff or free personnel hours to invest in a complex online strategy, but there are certainly some simple steps you can take to start reaping the rewards the Web can bring.
Of course, once you get “the basics of online in place,” you must protect your website from hackers and malware. This maxim applies to every company, from your fledgling start-up to Fortune 500 enterprises. Every day more than 30,000 websites, most of them belonging to SMEs, are infected with some type of malware. Hackers hunt for vulnerabilities and use them to breach your website. Once your site is compromised, your sensitive corporate data soon follows.
What’s the best way to safeguard your site and your company? Using Acunetix, you can scan your site for web and network vulnerabilities, malware and hacker activity. Think of Acunetix as a sentinel at the gate to your start-up – your website. Acunetix scans your website for security issues and notifies you immediately of any vulnerabilities detected. It safeguards your website and your customer data and keeps your company off the Google blacklist.
As a startup you may opt to use WordPress to power your website, as it is easy to install and your site get up. Although WordPress is known to be very secure, it does have it’s own set of security issues. To add to that, there have been various instances of vulnerable themes and plugins. Acunetix will check your WordPress security and report on issues, allowing to focus more on setting up your site, and work on creating new content.
Register for a free 14 day trial, and get your site checked today.
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