Facebook page vs a website: do you need both?

You need both, and the difference that matters is ownership: a Facebook page is rented space that can be disabled without a real appeal, while your website is the one thing nobody can take off you. Social brings discovery. The site holds the business.

The myth worth killing first is the one that goes the other way: that social media is a waste of time for a serious business. It is not. For a lot of trades it is the single best source of new customers. But it is a shop in someone else’s building, on a lease you never read.

The two jobs are genuinely different

Look down that table and the pattern is obvious. Neither column wins. They are answering different questions, which is exactly why arguing about which one to have is the wrong argument.

The ownership problem, plainly

You did not buy your Facebook page. You were lent it, and the terms can change whenever the platform decides.

Pages get restricted or disabled by automated systems that occasionally get it wrong. A florist I spoke to lost hers for eleven days over a flagged image that was, as far as anyone could tell, a photo of a bouquet. The appeal was a form. There was nobody to ring. Her bookings came almost entirely through Messenger, so for eleven days her business was effectively closed.

She got it back. Plenty do not, or wait months. The lesson is not that Facebook is evil, it is that the page was the only door into her business and she did not own the door.

Reach is the quieter version of the same problem. The number of your own followers who see a post is decided by an algorithm you have no say in, and it has trended downward for years. You can build an audience for a decade and wake up reaching a fraction of it.

What a website does that a page cannot

It appears when someone searches. Somebody typing “emergency electrician Sheffield” is ready to buy. A page built to answer exactly that question can compete for it. A social profile very rarely does, because it is not structured to answer questions, it is structured to show a feed.

It explains things properly. A post about your pricing scrolls out of view in a day. A pricing page sits there forever, gets found, and answers the question before anyone rings.

It closes the doubt. People check. They see you on Facebook, then look for a website to confirm you are a real, established business with an address and a phone number. Having no site puts you behind the competitor who has one, fairly or not.

It works with your Google Business Profile. The profile gets you into Maps, the site backs it up. Those two together are what local search actually runs on, and the comparison is spelled out in Google Business Profile vs a website.

What Facebook does that a website cannot

Being fair to the other side, because it earns its place.

People discover you without looking for you. Nobody searches for a cake decorator on a Tuesday afternoon. They see one in their feed because a friend commented. Search cannot manufacture that.

It proves you exist right now. A post from yesterday says the business is alive. A website with no dated content says very little either way.

Messenger is where a lot of people prefer to enquire. Especially for anything social or visual. Forcing those customers onto a contact form loses some of them.

It is free to start and quick to post. For a new business with no budget, that is not nothing.

If you can only do one right now

Start with whichever your customers already use, then add the other when you can.

If your work is visual and spreads by sharing, hairdressing, food, events, anything people photograph, build the social presence first. It will bring work sooner.

If people find you by searching a service and a place, plumbing, accountancy, legal, repairs, build the website first. Social will not reach someone with a leak at midnight.

But treat whichever you skip as a gap you will close, not a decision you made. The businesses that get hurt are the ones that put everything into one channel and then discovered the channel was not theirs. The wider version of this argument is in website vs social media.

Getting both handled

Doing both properly is more work than most owners have time for, which is the real reason people end up with only one. Our plans are £49, £99 and £199 a month with no contract, and the higher tiers cover the social posting alongside the site and the Google profile so the two actually point at each other.

If you are currently running everything through a Facebook page and it makes you slightly nervous, tell us how customers reach you now and we will suggest the smallest sensible thing to add. Often it is one page and a domain in your name, not a full build.

Own the door. Rent the shopfront if you like, but own the door.