Business accounts Register a company Support About Open an account Log in to web An in-depth guide to starting an online business June 5, 2020 Blog › Small business tips › An in-depth guide to starting an online business The internet has transformed how we do business. Anyone with a laptop, an internet connection and a great idea can start an online business. But it’s not as simple as creating a website and registering your business. If you want to boost your chances of having a successful online business, you need to follow a strategic approach. This involves validating your business idea before spending a penny, preparing a thorough go-to-market strategy, designing, building and optimising your website and creating captivating content to drive traffic to your business. Done right, you can reach a monumental audience and make a lot of money. In 2019, 87% of people made an online purchase in the UK and by end-of-year, 19.7% of retail sales took place online. Since the Coronavirus crisis, that number has shot up to 30%. Source: ons.gov.uk In this article, we’ll dive into how to choose a winning business idea, the benefits of running an online business, how to successfully start an online business and the most popular online business ideas. Table of contents: What are the benefits of running an online business? What makes a good online business idea? How to successfully start an online business The most popular online business ideas: E-commerce Freelancing Digital marketing and advertising Business coaching and consulting Webinars and online courses SaaS products or services What are the benefits of running an online business? Running an online business is an exciting endeavour. It gives you the chance to choose how, where and what you spend your time on during the day. Best of all, you get to make your own business decisions. From how to spend your budget, to your preferred tools and avenues for marketing and branding to whom you partner with and what clients you take on. Before Coronavirus, remote-work was already on the rise and Founders/C level executives made up 55% of all remote workers. As COVID-19 has further shifted the landscape from physical to remote offices, working remotely may become the new normal. Moreover, half of the global population says they will not return to shops for some time even with the ease of lockdown restrictions, meaning online businesses will continue to be in high demand. As your own boss of an online business, you gain a variety of benefits: Remote work opportunities: When you run an online business, you can work from wherever you’d like. This flexibility gives you the freedom to choose how you structure your day and what you spend your time doing. Additionally, the UK 2020 State of Remote Work reports that 74% of people feel more productive when working remotely. It’s the perfect environment to brainstorm, build and nurture your idea. Independence: Working for yourself allows you to broaden your skill-set and expand your knowledge base. Many business owners take online courses, participate in webinars and earn new certifications to help them strategically scale their business. As you don’t need to take direction from a boss, every decision is your own. This is incredibly empowering and gives you a chance to step into your own authority. Financial gain: Choosing how many clients to take on, how and when to scale, what you spend your business budget on and how much you pay yourself is freeing. If you work hard, you can make more money than you ever have before. It won’t happen overnight and there is no guarantee, but if you persevere, you may reach your financial goals. Further, if you work from home, you can claim some of your bills on your taxes. These small business tax breaks can help you save money that you can put back into your business to boost your growth potential. Opportunity for growth: Being your own boss changes you. You may overcome challenges and push yourself harder than ever before. You will most likely become inspired by what you can accomplish when you put your mind to it, leading to personal and professional development. By proving that your business idea and unique value proposition (UVP) is well-received by the market, you can strengthen your social authority. Even if your first idea doesn’t pan out in the long run, you’ll have established a strong network of like-minded professionals willing to listen or invest in your next business venture. Control: The best part about making your own decisions is learning how to be a great boss. You can glean insights from past-role models in your own life, or conversely, commit to being a better leader than negative bosses from your past. The most effective leaders learn the importance of listening and the power of creating a positive workplace culture that motivates their team to work together towards a common goal. Of course, with these added benefits come added pressures. Making your own decisions means the repercussions of these choices fall entirely on you. And if you can’t keep revenue flowing in, you may not be able to survive. With proper planning and forecasting, you can boost your chances of success. Starting a new online business is always a gamble, but done right, the rewards far outweigh the risks. Start doing what you love and register your business with Tide for FREE Registering your business with Tide is fast, easy and free. You’ll also get a free business current account, which is the best way to ensure you’re keeping your finances in order from day one. Be your own boss and start your company registration process today! What makes a good online business idea? The recipe for a successful online business idea is similar to the steps you would follow when choosing any business idea. At the top of the list is making sure your idea is something that people actually need and will buy. Even the most creative, inspired ideas won’t work if there’s limited audience buy-in. Here are four steps you can follow to help validate your idea before diving head first into it: 1. Learn from other people’s successes (and failures) Your best resources are people’s previous experiences. Find them, study them and figure out what other people did well and where they fell flat. The worst mistake that you can make is falling in love with your idea and bringing it to market before validating it. No matter how excited you are with your creation, if people don’t have a need for it, you won’t make enough money to survive. The most successful people understand this and conduct thorough research on a variety of ideas before moving forward. There is an abundance of insights, interviews and data that you can find online about how successful businesses got their start. You can learn about what they would and wouldn’t do differently if they were to start again as well as general advice for budding entrepreneurs. For example, Nicholas Woodman, the founder and CEO of GoPro, failed big before striking gold. His first failed venture was a website called EmpowerAll.com where he planned to sell marked up electronic goods. The site didn’t even launch. Next up, he raised $3.9 million to launch Funbug, a gaming and marketing platform where users could win cash prizes. But, the dot com bubble burst, claiming his company and all the investment he raised. Shortly after, he took a surfing trip and became inspired to capture swells in action from a first-person POV. After borrowing some money and putting in two years of hard work, he launched his first product and it was an immediate success. Still, Woodman hit bumps in the road and quickly realised he needed to slow down and restructure his leadership style. He also adopted a more programmatic growth effort, focusing on both short-term and long-term goals, rather than trying to outperform himself at every turn. This is just one of many stories that you can learn useful information from. Take advantage of this knowledge base and learn as much as you can before committing to an idea. 2. Identify if your idea solves a problem (and if there is a need for it) The most common businesses are formed in response to a growing problem. Their product or service solves that problem, therefore people buy into it to fix a pain point in their life. Often, entrepreneurs experience this problem in their own lives and start their business because nobody else has successfully solved the problem yet. Before you move forward, make sure that other people share this problem and also want a solution that fixes it. For example, UK company Seenit, founded by Emily Forbes, has launched the world’s first video crowdsourcing platform. The idea is to help businesses crowdsource and edit user-generated content. This solution solves the problem of needing to hire and pay a film crew to capture moments. It also helps large-scale or remote companies stay more connected through collaborative storytelling. As people can document events from their phones like never before, Seenit has devised a whole new way to engage audiences and involve communities. It helps businesses stay relevant, save money, create more authentic video content and capture thousands of more unique camera shots and angles than a small crew can pull off. Other businesses are formed by transforming a passion into a business-savvy venture. As long as you take a smart approach, there’s no reason why you can’t capitalise on your existing skill set and interests. This means refocusing your mindset to uncover ways to successfully monetise your passion. If you enjoy drawing, for example, you could consider learning graphic design tools and starting a graphic design business. If there is a gap in the market and you can identify use cases where people transformed passions or needs into successful businesses, you’re off to a good start. 3. Research and analyse market trends Take a peek at what businesses are performing well and what businesses aren’t gaining traction. Also, research topics that are trending to uncover what the public is talking about, looking for, happy with, disappointed by and so on. You can do this through a variety of free and paid online tools. Google Trends, Twitter, Social Mention and Reddit are some of the most popular platforms to dig deep into market insights, trending topics and stories and influencer data. You can also hop on social sites like Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn to search for your various topic ideas and identify trends, needs, pain points and successes. If you’re considering starting a freelance graphic design business or freelance blogging, for example, see what other freelancers in those sectors are doing well or poorly. Analyse how they market themselves, their skill set and client base to further form your approach. The information that you need to decipher if your idea has a fighting chance is out there. Put in the work, read tons of content and analyse various trends and data to pinpoint which idea has the biggest chance of success. 4. Join the conversation (and share unique content) After uncovering who talks about your idea and where they talk about, it’s time to join the conversation. This is the most reliable way to validate your business idea. Why? Because the people in these groups and spaces may become your potential customers, so it’s important to understand exactly what they want and need before attempting to market and sell to them. Understanding your target audience is key to how you will position yourself in the market. This research will help you choose your branding and promotion strategy as well as your suite of products and services. As a starting point, you should learn about your audience’s: Desires Demographics Average income Expectations Needs Current products or services they’ve bought into What those products or services do well and any gaps in service This information will fuel your go-to-market strategy. No matter how hard you work on creating a superior product or service, it will mean nothing if you don’t have a strategic marketing strategy. In fact, research shows that 34% of UK small business owners state that attracting new customers is their biggest challenge and only 27% are confident in their marketing strategy. You can take strategic steps to avoid falling into this category. How? By creating and sharing content about your business idea as part of your ongoing conversations. See if your content resonates with this audience and if they want to learn more. This is a great way to build out your UVP as well as amass a following before you spend valuable time and money creating your product or service. What are the most popular online business ideas? The online business market is saturated, which means more competition, but also more opportunities. There are plenty of paths to go down. You can run a one-person show, a mid-sized agency or a full-scale e-commerce business. Each path can be fruitful and profitable. The right path for you primarily depends on your goals, personality traits and aspirations. E-commerce The UK has the most advanced e-commerce market in all of Europe and the third-largest e-commerce market in the world. Source: growcode.com As there are thousands of e-commerce stores in the UK, you will have to work extra hard to stand out. There are plenty of platforms to choose from when setting up an online store. You can create your own website and add an e-commerce plugin to take payments, like WooCommerce for WordPress, or sell products on a third-party site like Shopify, Amazon, eBay or Etsy. You can also combine your approach by creating your own website to take payments as well as marketing on a third-party platform. This is a strategic approach that allows you to drive traffic to your site by selling your items on popular marketplaces. While many people may simply purchase directly from a site like Amazon, many others will want to conduct research into your brand by visiting your site and reading your story before making a purchase. An independent survey shows that 86% of people in the UK shop on Amazon. But, when starting their product search, 48.1% will look on Google first compared to 23.6% that go straight to Amazon. Source: shopblocks.com These are compelling statistics that show not only how popular Amazon is, but how important it is to have your own site to grab the attention of people searching on Google. The two most popular types of products or services to sell online are: Niche: These products or services fit a specific customer base, are often hand made or one of a kind, and incredibly popular if done right. That’s because they are usually made in small batches and thus consistently in high demand. For example, hand made bandanas for dogs are a niche product that can attract a unique and loyal lifetime customer base. Commoditised: These products or services are used and needed by a majority of people, therefore they’re highly popular. For example, big brand name phone cases are a commoditised item because most people have smartphones and require cases to protect them. Most online store owners sell a variety of both types. Commoditised products help get customers in the digital door and niche products are unique to your business thus boost your brand presence and positioning. Plus, if you only offer commoditised products, you will be competing against powerhouses like Amazon. A better strategy is to treat companies like Amazon as a friend rather than a competitor and use their platforms to help scale your business. And, selling niche products or services to a unique audience can help you amass a passionate following that will rave about your product with friends and family. In the long run, this tactic is more valuable and may help you scale faster than starting off by trying to sell an already popular product or idea to a broad audience. To better understand the sector needs, in the UK, clothes and sports goods are the most popular online purchase, followed by household goods, holiday accommodation and travel arrangements and tickets for events. Source: europa.eu After you’ve decided what you want to sell online, you have to decide where you will source your products from. Do you want to make and ship the products yourself? Or, would you prefer to outsource the manufacturing and shipping via a wholesale or drop shipping method? Each option has its benefits and drawbacks and it entirely depends on how hands-on you want to be in the production process. Make products yourself Naturally, making everything yourself gives you full control, but can cost you tons of time and money in production, storing, shipping and labour. On the flip side, you may save more money upfront because you won’t need to make a large purchase order from a manufacturer. If you’re planning to grow, however, consider that you may need to shift your business plan to allow for scalability. Manufacture If you choose to have a manufacturer make your products, do you want to source domestically or from overseas? Domestic manufacturers are often more expensive, making overseas manufacturing a popular and common choice. If you’ve validated your product and are positive that there is a market, you may be better off placing a large order from a manufacturer to start, either locally or abroad. In both situations, the upfront expenses for your business are larger, but your margins will be higher because of the lower cost per unit. Wholesale Wholesale is the most straightforward process because you are buying products directly from a manufacturer or middleman. The idea is to buy at a lower price and sell at a higher price, thus increasing your profit margins. You accrue less risk when buying wholesale because the product you are buying is already validated. Rather than curating a creative or unique idea yourself, you can make money off of somebody else’s idea. This makes perfect sense for some people but may not be rewarding for others. However, choosing to wholesale can be risky because you are often selling a commoditised product in a highly competitive setting. You’ll need to get creative with how you differentiate yourself and stand out from the crowd. Dropship Drop shipping is similar to wholesale, but you never touch the product. Rather, you take orders online, forward them to your supplier or dropship partner, and then they ship them to your customer. Like wholesale, these products are somebody else’s validated idea and your business acts as a key player in the fulfilment cycle. You make money by charging more to your customers than your drop shipping partners charge to you for sourcing and shipping the product. A huge benefit is that you don’t need to purchase or manage inventory. You can also sell a variety of products as they are easy to source. It also has the lowest startup costs. However, the competition is fierce, you have relatively low margin opportunities, and, because you rely on 3rd party manufacturers, you may experience backorders from time to time. This can lead to customer dissatisfaction that reflects badly on your business. Launching your e-commerce business Before launching your e-commerce website, make sure you understand both the local and international laws regarding running an e-commerce business. In the UK, you must adhere to the legal rules laid out in the Electronic Commerce Regulations 2002. In most of the aforementioned options, you will need a professionally created website, hosting, a team to help you run it, vendors, licences, permits, etc. Make sure you that follow all the best practices for launching an online business, such as a great business name, logo and branding assets, a website optimised for search engines, engaging content, attention-grabbing images, solid KPIs and a strategic promotion and marketing plan. You can read about each of these steps in detail in our guide to launching an e-commerce business in the UK. Freelancing Not every successful online business is in the ecommerce sector. In fact, there are over 2 million freelancers in the UK that contribute £125 billion to the economy. Freelancers are a highly valuable part of the project economy. According to the Centre for Research on Self-Employment (CRSE), freelancers give businesses the chance to enlist flexible expertise beyond their in-house employee talent. This can boost innovation and help companies navigate periods of understaffing or sudden increases in product or service demand. The most popular freelance careers are sales and marketing, business support, web design and graphic design, writing and translation, video, photo and audio, website development and website design, software and mobile development and social media: Source: moneysupermarket.com Working for yourself, by yourself, can lend to highly productive output. It’s also incredibly rewarding and you can even make more money while working fewer hours than in a traditional setting. According to a report by MoneySuperMarket, freelancers work an average of 27 hours a week. They also reported that flexible working hours, being your own boss and flexibility of project choice are the main reasons people enjoy freelancing. However, freelancing can get lonely and inconsistent cash flow can be a challenge. In order to stay in the zone and draw energy from other freelancers and entrepreneurs, consider working from a coworking space or café every once in a while. And, make sure you are scheduling routine social activities with your friends and family and are looking after your mental health. Also, freelancers often trade skills or hire one another to help each other out. Attend networking events to socialise with other freelancers and business owners to form these mutually-beneficial relationships and business partnerships. For example, a writer may help a developer by writing the copy for their website, and the developer can return the favour by creating a custom website for the writer. These relationships can be invaluable to a freelancer, especially one that’s on a budget. Ultimately, freelancing is a low-cost way to get your name out there and build a business without taking a huge risk. Best-practice is to create a website to showcase your skill set and offerings. You can either create your own website for cheap by using a platform like WordPress or Squarespace, pay a developer to create a custom website for you, or use a third-party platform like Upwork to create a basic profile and instantly apply for jobs. Quick Tip: To learn more about how to stay productive, active and healthy to boost your chances of success, read our complete guide on how to work for yourself. Digital marketing and advertising Knowing how to make brands stand out from the crowd, either through organic or paid methods, is crucial to online business success. Doing this for yourself is key, but if you are especially skilled at it, you can make money doing it for other businesses. According to Hubspot, 61% of marketers say improving SEO and growing their organic presence is their top inbound marketing priority. And 68% of marketers say that paid advertising is very important to their marketing strategy. Digital marketing and advertising agencies and/or freelancers are always in demand. Why? Because even if a business has an in-house team, that team only works with that specific business’s brand. While that gives the in-house team a vast advantage in terms of brand awareness, customer pain points and products and services, it makes it more difficult for them to step back and take a broader industry perspective. Agencies and freelancers, on the other hand, work with multiple brands at once. They are intimately familiar with the market landscape and can take a high-level approach to evaluate a business’s marketing and advertising strategies. This helps them to easily identify areas of improvement and opportunities to optimise efforts. A few popular digital marketing and advertising roles are: SEO specialist: SEO specialists have a deep understanding of the best practices and tools to help drive more traffic to a value proposition. Whether through website optimisation, link building, keyword research or creating engaging content, they understand how to help businesses expand their online presence, generate more leads and boost conversions. Social media marketers: If you understand how to leverage social media to generate brand awareness, inspire loyalty and help brands scale, then social media marketing is for you. Globally, there are more than 3 billion active social media users (more than half of the world’s population) who spend an average of 2 hours and 24 minutes on social each day. Businesses know this, meaning they are often willing to put a chunk of their budget toward creating engaging social media content and advertisements. Ad management and PPC: Programmatic advertising is helping businesses target niche audiences based on their online behaviour. If you have the skills to capitalise on this by helping businesses strategically advertise online, you could easily reap the benefits. The digital advertising and marketing industry will continue to skyrocket as technology expands and people spend even more time interacting online. It’s a great sector to build an online business in and, done right, can lead to enormous rewards. Business coaching and consulting If you have significant expertise in the business sector, you can make money online by offering business consulting services. Companies often turn to business consultants to help to improve operational and performance efficiency, meet their goals and identify opportunities for improvement. If you have a knack for being able to dig deep into an existing operation and pinpoint specific areas of improvement, then your advice and opinions will be invaluable to many businesses. Additionally, there are many people just like you that are trying to start or grow an online business. Coaching people through this process is a highly sought after skill, as many people need some help getting their idea off the ground, validating it and bringing it to market. While this guide is highly informative, it won’t be there to hold your hand through every step of the process. Business coaches are there at every turn offering advice, insights and expert guidance to help you jumpstart your business and strategically plan for growth. Webinars and online courses Paid webinars and online courses are a great way to launch your online business dreams. You don’t necessarily need your own product or ideas—you simply need to be better at explaining how something works than others. You can run a webinar or create an online course on a physical product, a service like a SaaS platform or an idea like content marketing. The more comprehensive your course and information, the better. People will pay good money to learn something new or enhance existing skills. In fact, business founders and entrepreneurs often watch online courses and webinars to level-up their skill set and broaden their knowledge base. First, pick a topic that you have expertise in and interests you. You have to be passionate about it or else you’ll end up resenting how much time you’re spending researching, talking and creating ongoing content for your audience. Then, like every other good business idea, make sure there’s a need for your content. Are people asking questions about it? Do people struggle to understand it? What courses or webinars exist already and what gaps can you fill? Intercom, an interactive customer service business messenger platform, have made webinars a top priority. They run weekly webinars which help to increase customer lifetime value (CTV), convert customers from trial to paid subscribers and boost targeted brand outreach. From live Ask me Anything (AMA) forums to discussions with industry experts, they are able to simultaneously relay valuable information while boosting brand authority via conversations with industry leaders. Intersperse your courses and webinars with various types of media. For example, you can include: Presentations Graphics Videos Community learning areas Reading content Activities Panel discussions Interviews The more interactive and interesting, the more engaging and successful your courses and webinars will be. Finally, sell your course by telling the customer exactly what they will learn in it. Give them measurable outcomes so that they can quantify the value they’ll get from paying for it. To hook your audience, try releasing a short video that explains what they’ll learn in the course. Or, publish the first chapter for free and allow your audience to determine if it’s worth paying for the rest of the modules. The best part about webinars is that if they are evergreen, people will continue to buy them over a long period of time. This can help you generate a consistent stream of passive income that boosts your business revenue and adds stability to your career. Create a SaaS product SaaS (software as a service) tools help businesses become more accessible and versatile. Many of them help to automate tasks, freeing up valuable time and resources. Others help businesses stay organised, remote-friendly, streamline processes and offer more user-friendly products and services. There are the top 10 current SaaS industry trends: If you’re a developer or can partner up with one, there is ample opportunity to make a new product, level-up an existing product, or make a cheaper version of a successful product. Regardless of which sector you decide to start a SaaS business in, it’s imperative that it solves a problem. SaaS tools thrive when they make customer’s lives easier. If there isn’t a need, your product or service won’t sell. You should also aim to find a product or service that people will be willing to pay for on an ongoing basis, like an online security platform or a tool that collates API connection information into an easily navigable spreadsheet. The SaaS industry isn’t slowing down anytime soon. The global SaaS market is forecast to hit US 157 billion in 2020. source: statista.com If you have a great idea and the tools to bring it to life, now is a great time to get involved. When you are ready – register your business with Tide for FREE Registering your business with Tide is incredibly fast, easy and free. You not only get to officially start your company, but you get a free business current account at the same time, which is the best way to ensure you’re keeping your finances in order from day one. Be your own boss and register your company with Tide! How to successfully start an online business Similar to a brick and mortar or hybrid physical and remote business, it’s important to take your time when picking a business idea. Make sure that your idea fills a need, solves a problem and is in demand. After you’ve validated your UVP, it’s key that you create a good business website. That means writing engaging copy that describes exactly what your product or service is and how it helps customers solve problems. Talk about the benefits, add testimonials (if applicable) and include CTAs. Also, make sure to optimise your website with captivating graphics and video, but be wary of load times. 53% of mobile users will leave your site if it takes longer than three seconds to load. The UK domain is a great resource for learning SEO tips and tricks when launching a new business website. Before you can officially launch, you need to register your business. This step officially makes your business a legitimate venture and authenticates your offerings. When you register with Tide, you immediately get a free business bank account, which helps you to separate personal and business finances and keep a pulse on your overall financial health. Ready to get your certificate of incorporation within hours? Read our guide on how to register your business and then register your business with Tide today. If you’re unsure of how to keep track of your small business accounting, you can familiarise yourself by reading our beginner’s guide to small business accounting. If you want to learn more to guarantee you are doing everything in your power to stay above board and pay taxes correctly, consider setting a meeting with a small business accountant. Once launched, work hard to establish a reputation to boost brand awareness. Attend networking events, join several relevant online conversations, create content for lead generation and share compelling content on business social media accounts. Also, consider creating a newsletter and using email marketing to generate more leads. You want to position yourself as an industry expert to create a buzz and amass a following. Once you have a few clients or customers, ask for referrals, create an incentive program to generate more sign ups and conversions and learn about your existing customers’ experiences. Consistently update your customer personas to ensure that the way you are promoting your business resonates with your target audience. Always look for ways to increase your income and revenue streams by enhancing your product or service and reselling it to your existing base, upselling and trying to land bigger clients. Quick Tip: If you haven’t got access to any funding or capital, read our guide on how to start a business without capital. Wrapping up Starting an online business requires planning, preparation and hard work. Done right, the payoff can be tremendous. Validate your idea before you create a website and buy a domain name. Make sure there’s a need for your product or service to ensure that people will buy into it. Do plenty of market research and join the conversation early on to see how your potential customers react to your idea. Choose the type of online business that best suits your personality. Do you want to work alone or grow into a large scale company? Do you enjoy managing others and forming several business partnerships, or would you rather only talk with clients? Once you decide on the sector and product or service, create a stunning website and optimise it for SEO. Strategically promote and market your business, products and services in a way that generates demand and drives customers to your website. Make sure you are following all the local laws and regulations to ensure your business is above board. Keep an eye on your business finances and consult with an accountant need be. Consistently analyse your business model and target market to guarantee you’re up to date with the latest trends and needs. If you follow this step-by-step process, you’ll increase your chances of launching a thriving online business and reap the benefits of working for yourself. Read more from our business startup series: Starting Up 1.1 How to start a business in the UK: 10 steps to build from scratch 1.2 How to find the perfect name for your small business 1.3 How to register a business? A simple guide 1.4 How to start a business without capital 1.5 10 ways to fund your business 1.6 How to create a business plan: 9 things to consider when starting Business Ideas 2.1 15 business ideas you can get started with today 2.2 How to start a business online Business Funding 3.1 How much does it cost to start a business in the UK? 3.2 How to raise capital for your business: Everything you need to know Business Mindset 4.1 How to make your first year in business a success 4.2 How to combat loneliness when becoming a solo-founder 4.3 How to employ someone: hiring your first employees Photo by Canva, published on Unsplash Valentine Hutchings Head of Community and small business enthusiast Tide Team Linkedin Join our community of entrepreneurs, freelancers and small business owners Tide is here to help small business owners and sole traders save time and money. Take a look at our Business Bank Account and get time back to focus on your business. You might also be interested in: 10 effective steps to start your business in the UK June 3, 2020 Read more > How much does it cost to start a business in the UK? June 19, 2020 Read more > 15 business ideas you can get started with today November 4, 2020 Read more > A business bank account that's free, easy to open, and helps you start doing what you love. Tide is about doing what you love. That’s why we’re trusted by 350,000+ UK businesses. 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