Do you need a website if you already have a Facebook page?

The short answer

If Facebook brings you steady work and you are happy with that, you are not doing anything wrong. But a Facebook page and a website do different jobs. A page is good at keeping existing customers and followers up to date. A website is better at being found by new customers who have never heard of you, and at being something you control. Most small businesses that rely on Facebook alone eventually run into one of the problems below.

Ownership: you are renting, not owning

Your Facebook page lives on someone else's platform, under their rules. That brings risks most owners do not think about until something goes wrong:

• Account problems: if your personal account is hacked, locked or disabled, the business page can go with it, and getting it back can take a long time.
• Rule changes: the platform decides how pages look, what features exist and who sees your posts. Those decisions change without asking you.
• No address of your own: your page link sits on Facebook's domain. You cannot take it with you.
• Your customer history: messages and comments live inside the platform. If you lose access, you lose that record too.

A website on your own domain is different. The domain is registered to you, the content is yours, and you can move it to another provider if you choose. That is why it is worth owning a domain even if you only use it for a simple site and email.

Reach: who actually sees you

Facebook shows your posts mainly to people who already follow you, and only to a portion of them. It is a good way to stay in touch, but it is not where most people go when they need a tradesperson or a local service for the first time. They search on Google, often on a phone, often with a town name: "roofer near me", "dog groomer in Leeds".

Facebook pages can appear in search results, but they are rarely as strong as a website with clear pages for each service and area. A website lets you have a page that matches each thing people search for. Our guide to SEO basics for small businesses explains how that works in plain terms.

There is also the visitor who does not use Facebook at all, or who does not want to log in to read your page. A website works for everyone with a browser.

Trust and first impressions

Many customers check a business before they call. A website with your own domain, a clear list of services, your areas, real photos and reviews tells them you are established. It also gives you an email address at your domain, which looks more professional on quotes and invoices than a free email address.

Think about how your work is usually won. If customers compare two or three businesses before ringing, they are judging you on what they can find in a minute or two. A page that clearly answers "do they do this, do they cover my area, can I trust them" makes that decision easier. A busy social feed of mixed posts, offers and shared content often does not, even if the work in it is excellent.

A website also lets you control the order things appear in. On Facebook, a customer might scroll past last week's posts before finding what you do and where. On a website you decide what they see first.

Comparing the two side by side

Question	Facebook page	Own website
Who controls it?	The platform	You
Can you move it?	No	Yes, with your domain
Found by new customers searching	Sometimes	Better, with pages per service and area
Keeping followers updated	Strong	Weaker, unless they visit
Reviews and conversation	Built in	You add them
Running cost	Free to set up	A domain and a plan or hosting
Enquiry tracking	Messages scattered in the inbox	Forms you can store and follow up

How to use both without doubling the work

You do not need to choose. The simplest setup is to treat the website as your permanent base and Facebook as your noticeboard:

1. Put the fixed information on the website: services, areas, prices or price guidance, about you, contact details and legal pages. This changes rarely.
2. Put the day-to-day on Facebook: recent jobs, offers, availability, behind-the-scenes photos.
3. Link both ways: add your website address to your Facebook page, and link to your Facebook page from your website footer.
4. Send enquiries to one place: when people message on Facebook asking for a quote, point them to the enquiry form so details are captured in the same way every time.
5. Reuse content: a good job photo can go on Facebook today and into your website gallery at the end of the month.
6. Keep your Google Business Profile up to date too: for local search it often matters more than either. See our Google Business Profile guide.

What about cost and effort?

The usual reason people stay on Facebook only is that a website feels like a big project. It does not have to be. A small site with five pages is enough for most local businesses, and our guide to how long it takes to build a website shows where the time really goes.

If writing the pages is what puts you off, Site Shifter builds a complete first version from six questions, including wording and photos, which you then adjust and publish on your own domain, often the same day. It is £24.95 a month, cancel any month, and enquiries from the site land as client records in BonusFlow rather than mixed in with your social messages. Keep posting on Facebook as you do now; the website simply gives you somewhere permanent of your own.

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