Do I Need a Website or Is a Facebook Page Enough?

It's a question we hear surprisingly often: "Do I really need a website? I've got Facebook and Instagram doing well." It's a fair question, especially when setting up a website feels like a significant investment compared to setting up a free social profile.

The short answer is: yes, you need a website. But let's look at why, because the reasons go deeper than most people assume.

What a Facebook page does well

A Facebook page is genuinely useful for certain things. It lets you connect with an existing community, post updates and photos, respond to messages, and collect reviews — all at no cost. For some very local, word-of-mouth businesses, it can be a meaningful source of enquiries.

We're not dismissing social media. It has a real role to play in marketing your business.

What a Facebook page cannot do

It can't rank on Google for service searches. When someone searches "electrician in Derby", they see Google results — not Facebook pages. Without a website, you're invisible to this entire search channel, which represents huge volumes of high-intent local searches every day.

You don't own it. Facebook can change its algorithm, restrict your reach, suspend your page for reasons outside your control, or simply cease to exist. Everything you build there is at the mercy of a company whose interests don't align with yours. Your website is yours — permanently.

It doesn't build credibility with professional buyers. Many B2B clients, larger organisations, and anyone conducting due diligence before hiring will look for a professional website. A Facebook page as your only online presence signals that you're either very small or not taking your business seriously.

It can't be fully customised to your brand. Facebook pages all look like Facebook pages. You can't control the layout, the user journey, or the impression you create the way you can with your own site.

You can't track and optimise the way you can with a website. Google Analytics on your own website gives you detailed data: where visitors come from, what they do, where they drop off. Facebook gives you limited, platform-specific metrics that don't translate to understanding your customer journey.

The ownership risk

This is the argument that businesses tend to overlook until it's too late. If you've spent years building a following on Facebook and your page gets suspended, hacked, or the platform's algorithm changes, you can lose your entire audience overnight — with no recourse.

Your website, by contrast, is an asset you own. The content, the domain, the SEO authority you build over time — it's all yours. A good website compounds in value year after year.

The right model: website as destination, social as channel

Think of your website as your home base and social media as one of several channels you use to drive people there. Your Facebook and Instagram posts, your Google Business Profile, your paid ads — they should all be pointing people back to your website, where you control the experience and capture the lead.

Social media alone is renting space on someone else's platform. A website is owning your own.