Website design for home-based businesses

A business run from home has two jobs online: look like the real business it is, and take orders the way the law and your schedule allow. A home-based business website does both. It shows your products with real photos, takes custom orders with the details you need, and keeps your home address off the internet. Rodco Systems builds these sites for home-based businesses in El Paso and Las Cruces at prices below most local competitors, and your home address stays off the page.

Is selling from home legal here?

For many products, yes, with rules that differ by state.

In Texas, the cottage food law changed on September 1, 2025. SB 541 raised the yearly limit to $150,000 in gross income, adjusted for inflation, and opened the law to nonprofits. Any food is allowed except meat and poultry, seafood, ice and ice cream products, low-acid canned goods, raw milk and anything with CBD or THC. Foods that need refrigeration, like cheesecake, are allowed if you register with DSHS and add the date made and a safe-handling statement. You complete a food handler course, and every product carries a label with your name, your address or DSHS registration number, the product name, the major allergens and a statement that the food was made in a private residence that isn’t inspected.

In New Mexico, the Homemade Food Act has applied since July 1, 2021. Low-risk foods like non-cream baked goods, candy, granola, roasted coffee and high-sugar jams can be made at home and sold to New Mexico consumers without an NMED permit, as long as you hold a food handler card.

Crafters and resellers have fewer food rules and more tax questions. If you sell taxable goods in Texas, a sales tax permit applies.

What has to be on the order page?

In Texas, two things the law spells out. Internet sales are allowed only when you, an employee or someone in your household delivers the order in person, so the page offers pickup or local delivery, never shipping. And before you take payment, the buyer has to see the label information. We put it on each product page, next to the price.

In New Mexico, the page can offer delivery or mail within the state, and it says plainly that you don’t ship out of state.

For any home seller, the page carries lead times and cutoffs (“Saturday orders close Wednesday at noon”), the area you deliver to, and a custom-order form with the date, quantity, flavors or materials and a reference photo.

What does the page look like? An illustrative wireframe

Picture a phone screen. At the top: your business name, “Custom cakes and cookies, Northeast El Paso” and two buttons, Order and WhatsApp. Below, six product photos with prices from, each opening a page with the label information, allergens and lead time. Then the custom-order form, a line on pickup and delivery areas, and three reviews linked to Google. On the Spanish page, the same layout in Spanish.

That’s an illustrative wireframe, not a client’s site. Your products, photos and rules go in.

How do you stay findable without publishing your address?

Google tells home-based businesses that serve customers elsewhere to clear the address from the Business Profile and set a service area. We set it up that way. In Texas, registering with DSHS also lets you print a registration number on the label instead of your address. The pickup address goes to the customer in the order confirmation, not on the website.

You’re far from alone in working this way. El Paso County had 80,831 businesses with no paid employees in 2023, including 194 bakeries and tortilla makers. The ones with a real order page are the ones customers can find again.