Home / Do I need a website if I have a Facebook page?
Do I need a website if I have a Facebook page?
The honest answer is that you need both, and they do completely different jobs. Here is what each one is actually for, and which one you are missing.
Plenty of good Australian businesses run entirely off a Facebook page. Tradies, salons, cafes, mobile operators. The page has their photos, their phone number and a few hundred locals who follow it, and it has never cost them a cent. If that is you, the page is not the problem and nobody should be telling you to delete it.
The problem is what it cannot do, and it cannot do the one thing that brings you people who have never heard of you.
Different jobs
What each one is actually for
| Your Facebook page | Your website | |
|---|---|---|
| Who it reaches | People who already follow you, and their friends when something gets shared. | Strangers searching for what you do, right when they need it. |
| When it works | You post. Reach depends on the algorithm, and organic reach for business pages has fallen a long way over the years. | Sits there and gets found. It does not need you to post to keep working. |
| May turn up for your exact business name. Rarely competes for "plumber Gosford". | Built to answer that exact search, and can rank for each service separately. | |
| Who owns it | Meta. The page exists while they allow it, and account issues are a form, not a person. | You. Domain in your name, files yours, moveable to anyone at any time. |
| What sits next to it | Ads, other businesses, whatever the feed shows next. | Nothing. It is your page. |
| Getting the details | Prices and hours are buried in old posts or the About tab that nobody opens. | Prices, hours and services on the first screen because that is what it is for. |
| People not on Facebook | Often cannot see it properly, and are sometimes asked to log in. | Opens for everyone, no account, no login. |
Both columns are honest. Facebook genuinely wins the first two rows for a business with an established local following.
The real risk
The bit most people have not thought about
If your Facebook page is disabled tomorrow, your business is off the internet that day. Your photos, your reviews, your customer messages and the only address people have for you, all gone at once. Pages get restricted for reasons that are sometimes automated and sometimes never explained, and the way back is a form rather than a phone call.
This is not an argument that Facebook is bad. It is the observation that it is not yours. Everything you have built there sits on ground you rent from a company that owes you nothing and does not answer the phone. A domain in your own name costs about twenty dollars a year and cannot be taken off you.
The test
Try this on your own phone
Open your phone, not your laptop, and search your own business name the way a customer would. Then search what you do plus your suburb: "electrician Cremorne", "barber Gosford".
If your own name brings up nothing useful
Somebody who is given your name cannot check you exist. That is a referral lost quietly, and you never hear about it.
If your name brings up a competitor
You are handing warm leads to somebody else. This happens more than people expect, especially with a common business name.
If the trade search shows five others and not you
Every one of those searches is somebody ready to buy today, and you are not in the running.
If your Facebook page does come up
Look at what a stranger actually sees in the first three seconds. Can they find your prices, your hours, or how to ring you, without scrolling past a post about the long weekend?
What to do
Keep the page. Add the thing you own.
Nobody sensible tells you to stop posting on Facebook. It works for the people who already follow you, it is free, and your regulars are there. The answer is not to swap one for the other.
Keep posting exactly as you are
The page keeps doing what it is good at. Jobs you have finished, hours over a long weekend, anything your regulars want to see.
Put the website link on the page
In the About section and the button at the top. It gives people somewhere to go for the things a post cannot hold.
Link back from the site
So somebody who finds you on Google can see you are active and real, which is exactly what the Facebook page is best at proving.
Connect your Google listing
For most local businesses the Google Business Profile brings in more than either of them. Free, and it works best pointed at a site you own.
Fair questions
The things people ask
Should I delete my Facebook page?
No. Keep it and keep posting. Add the website underneath so the people who are not scrolling Facebook can find you too.
Can my Facebook page rank on Google?
Sometimes, usually for your exact business name. It rarely competes for the searches that bring new customers, and you do not control how it appears when it does.
I get all my work from the page already.
Then it is working, and a website is not there to replace it. It is there to catch the people who look you up after somebody mentions you, which is a different set of people entirely.
What does it cost to have both?
The page stays free. A site from one of our layouts is $500, a full custom build is $1,000, one payment, and the domain about $20 a year in your name. There is a longer breakdown of what the market charges here.
Free mockup
See what yours would look like
Send us your Facebook page and we will build a mockup of the website version, with your photos and your words in it, before you spend anything. If you do not like it, that is the end of it and it has cost you nothing.
0468 053 175 · [email protected]