Do you actually need a website if you have a Facebook page?
The real question
A Facebook page can carry a business for a while. If you are booked solid from word of mouth, sell in person, and nobody is comparing three options before they call you, the page is doing its job today.
The question is whether it is doing the job you will need next year, because a page has a ceiling and most owners hit it without noticing. Here are the five places it gives way.
The five places a page gives way
1. People search for what you do before they pick someone.
Roofing, dentistry, law, HVAC, accounting, anything where a stranger searches, opens three tabs and decides. On Facebook you are competing in a feed. In search you are competing on a results page, and you cannot be on that page without something to rank. The page itself will almost never rank for "roof repair in Lawrenceville".
2. Someone needs to check whether you are real.
This is the one owners underestimate. A referral hears your name, searches it, and finds a Facebook page with eleven followers and a post from 2023. Nothing is wrong with your business, but the impression is that nothing much is happening. A simple site with your work, your prices and a way to reach you closes that gap in four seconds.
3. You want to be found by AI assistants.
People now ask ChatGPT and Google's AI for recommendations the way they used to ask a neighbour. Those systems read websites, directories and reviews. A Facebook page is largely closed to them. If you have no site, you are not in the answer, and you will never know you were left out.
4. You need to sell, book or collect anything.
Booking, deposits, intake forms, quotes, online orders. You can bolt some of this onto social, but you are renting the plumbing, and it breaks when the platform changes its mind.
5. You do not own the page.
This is the real one. Facebook can restrict, suspend or lose your page, and the appeal process is a web form into the void. It happens to real businesses every week. A domain and a site are yours in a way a page never is.
What people actually get wrong
The mistake is not "Facebook instead of a website". It is treating them as the same job.
Social is for the people who already found you. It keeps you in their feed, shows personality, and gives regulars something to react to. Search is for the people who have never heard of you and have a problem right now. Those are different audiences at different moments, and one channel cannot do both well.
The businesses that do best around here run both, and spend ten minutes a week on each.
The smallest version that works
You do not need the twelve page site an agency will quote you. For most local businesses the minimum that earns its keep is:
- One page that says what you do, where you do it, and who you do it for - Proof: photos of real work, a few real reviews - Prices, or at least a range. Hiding them loses you more customers than it wins - An obvious way to get in touch that works on a phone - Your Google Business Profile claimed and matching the site exactly
That is a one-page site. That is about a week's work, and we quote it after a short call. [Here is how we price a project](/pricing).
How to decide this week
Open your phone. Search for what you sell plus your town, as a stranger would. Not your business name, the service. Look at who shows up in the map results and the links underneath.
If your competitors are there and you are not, you now know what the page is costing you. If nobody in your trade shows up locally, you have found an opening that is cheap to take.
Either way, you will know more in five minutes than any agency pitch will tell you.
If you want a second pair of eyes, we do [a free teardown](/teardown): send the address, get back a five minute video on what is slow, what is broken on a phone, and the three things worth fixing first. No call needed. It works on a Facebook page too, and you will finish it knowing exactly where you are losing people.