How to pick the best Virtual Office in UK

In providing numerous office amenities and supportive business services for small businesses and remote work teams, Virtual Offices offer a flexible business model that’s becoming increasingly popular with business owners.

However, the variety of plans available within the virtual office industry means that business owners need to negotiate the market in order to find the right plan for their business. In other words, you will have to assess your own needs before you can find the right plan for you; which will involve negotiating the considerable differences between the plans offered by different virtual office providers.

In this article, we’ll look at some of the most important factors in selecting the right UK virtual office location for your business.

Determine your Company’s Needs

The various services offered by virtual offices include a business address, mail forwarding, a live receptionist, meeting room bookings, and several others. Your first step towards choosing a virtual office should therefore be to review the services available and decide which ones are most essential to your business, and which one’s may not be necessary (at least for the moment).

In making this initial assessment, remember to keep in mind the inherent flexibility of the virtual office as a package of services, in that it’s specifically designed to serve as a highly flexible, cost-effective business support solution. Therefore, remember that the services you enlist at the start can easily be expanded and upgraded at a later time, as and when needed.

If, for example, your priority is to create a client base of loyal customers for your e-commerce business, a professional live receptionist is a service you want to enlist from the start, as it will greatly assist your efforts in that goal.

Or, if your business is client-based and is heavily involved in meetings, presentations, or training sessions, you’ll want a virtual office plan that includes access to fully equipped and staffed meeting rooms—which is typically arranged by allocating an hourly block of time per month that serves your usage needs.

Compare Different Virtual Office Providers

Having determined the services most needed for your business, the next step is to research the different plans offered by various service providers to find an offering that best suits your needs.

Since different virtual offices providers also have different pricing schemes for their amenities – such as WiFi connection, call forwarding, and mail handling services – it’s important to check these thoroughly—particularly when looking at a virtual office with a low entry cost, as some providers sneakily design their plans to require expensive add-ons afterwards. So be diligent in inspecting the details of a plan whilst calculating the total cost of the services you’re planning to use.

Choose a Plan that’s Adaptable

While it’s not essential, it’s still best to find a virtual office provider with a plan that gives you the most flexibility possible; as ideally, you want the ability to adapt your virtual office to the developing needs of your business: Aside from the unpredictability of market factors, any growing small business exists essentially in a state of flux—which is why a virtual office that’s adaptable is a real asset for your business to have.

In fact, you should take time to consider what the state of your business is likely to be, or could be, in the short, medium and long term, in order to anticipate and factor-in your future needs whilst shopping for a virtual office now.

Look for Signs of Innovation

When assessing virtual office providers and perhaps weighing the plans of two against each other, an often overlooked aspect of this evaluation is the technical abilities of virtual office operators, which should be a factor in your purchasing decision.

Essentially, you want to look-over a prospective provider to assess its stage of innovation: if the provider is not investing time and money in developing their service within the industry, then the advantages inherent in a virtual office will become diminished with time, as industry innovations leave your provider – and thus your virtual office – behind the competition.

Therefore, seek a reliably innovative provider with a consistent trend for creativity in its services: for if you find one, you’ll ensure that your virtual office can grow into its full potential as a business asset.

Choose the Right UK Location

Having a professional business address is one of the prime advantages of a virtual office, as it represents your company’s headquarters whilst serving as its mailing address: your virtual office address will be displayed on all of your marketing mediums, such as your website, social media, business cards and letterheads.

In the UK, London is a prime location, being the main financial centre of the country and the best business city in Europe—not to mention it being recognised as the cultural and educational capital of the nation.

A virtual office location in London is therefore a great choice for many businesses; however, you should still consider the nature of your particular business when choosing a virtual office location that will suit it best. 

For example, it’s generally a more effective strategy to locate your virtual office in the city that best represents your client base: as in this way, you can actually target your most lucrative source of clients by having your business intimately associated with their city.

The appropriateness, in other words, of your virtual office location is more important than the market value of its location, i.e. it’s not best to go for the cheapest location just because it’s the cheapest; or to choose an upmarket location just because of the heightened prestige it offers.

The more important considerations for choosing your virtual office location are:

• If the location actually reflects the brand of your business

• If it’s easy for your clients to find and get to (if there are good transportation options in the area)

• If it’s suitably close enough to your home

So in order to make the best decision in choosing a virtual office for your business, be sure to evaluate your needs and weigh-up the advantages and disadvantages of each prospective provider and location with those needs in mind.

You should learn more about Virtual Offices if you are thinking about launching your new business, entering a new market or are looking to make changes to your current business.