Do I Need a Website If I Already Have a Facebook Page?

This comes up in almost every first conversation we have. Somebody has run a decent trade business for years off a Facebook page, the work keeps coming, and paying for a website feels like fixing something that is not broken. It is a fair position and we are not going to pretend otherwise.

The honest answer is that a Facebook page and a website do two genuinely different jobs, and most businesses only notice the missing one when work goes quiet. This is what each actually does, where Facebook stops, and how to decide whether the gap matters for you.

What a Facebook page is good at

Facebook is a broadcast channel to people who already know you exist. That is not a small thing. If you have built up a few hundred local followers over five years, you have something a lot of businesses would pay for, and every post reaches some slice of them for free.

• It keeps you in the minds of past customers, which is where repeat work comes from.
• It is the fastest way to show a finished job to people who care.
• Recommendation threads in local groups are genuinely one of the best lead sources a trade has.
• Messenger gets a reply faster than email ever will.

None of that is replaced by a website, and we would never tell you to stop doing it.

What a Facebook page cannot do

The limitation is one sentence long. Facebook shows your business to people who already follow you or who are shown it by somebody else. It does not get you found by a stranger who has just decided they need the thing you do.

That stranger is on Google, typing something like a service and a town, and what they see is the map results and then ordinary website results underneath. Your Facebook page is not competing for either in any serious way. So the work you get from Facebook is real, and it is capped at roughly the size of your existing network.

The four things people check before they ring

When somebody is deciding whether to call you, the same handful of questions go through their head, and a Facebook page answers about half of them.

1. Are they real and still trading? A page whose last post is from eighteen months ago reads as closed, whether or not it is.
2. Do they do my exact job? Scrolling a feed to find out whether you fit bathrooms as well as kitchens is work, and most people will not do it.
3. Do they cover where I live? Almost no Facebook page states this clearly. It is the single most common reason a good lead does not bother.
4. Roughly what will it cost? You do not need to publish a price list, but total silence on price makes a certain kind of customer assume the worst and go elsewhere.

A website answers all four in about eight seconds, which is roughly how long you get.

Who actually owns your page

This is the argument people find least interesting and should find most. Your Facebook page is not yours. It sits on somebody else's platform, under somebody else's rules, and it can be restricted, mistakenly flagged or lost with your personal account without warning and without a phone number to ring.

We have watched a business lose a page with years of reviews on it because of an account problem that had nothing to do with the business. There was no appeal that went anywhere. A domain you own and a site you own cannot be taken away by a moderation decision.

Where the real gap is: the map

If you take one practical thing from this, make it this one. The most valuable local search result is not a website and it is not Facebook, it is your Google Business Profile, the listing with the map pin and the reviews.

That listing is free, most trades have either never claimed it or filled in a third of it, and it sits above every ordinary result on the page. It also ranks better when it points at a real website, so the two reinforce each other. We set the profile up properly as part of every build because leaving it half done wastes most of the value of the site.

What this looks like in practice

The businesses we have taken live are not running websites instead of social media. Rinse Revive and M&M Detailing both post their work, because detailing is a visual trade and it would be daft not to. The site does the part social cannot: it is what comes up when somebody in the area searches for detailing and has never heard of either of them.

Same with Thelwall Carpentry in Sale. The photographs still go on social. The site is where somebody checks whether the carpenter they were recommended is any good before they pick up the phone.

So do you need one

You need one if you want work from people who do not already know you. You do not need one if your diary is full from recommendations, you are happy with that, and you have no intention of growing. That is a legitimate way to run a business and plenty of good tradespeople do it.

The middle case, which is most people, is a business that is fine now and quiet in January. A website does not fix a quiet January by magic, but it is the only thing you own that works while you are on a job, and it compounds. The one we build this month is still bringing work in three years.

What it costs, plainly

Our builds are £395 for a focused single service site, £650 for something with more depth, and £1,200 for a bigger build with an online shop or a booking system. You own it outright. A build can be split into three payments, same price, no interest and no fees, within twelve months.

Care plans are £45, £85 and £150 a month with no minimum term, for hosting, changes, monitoring and keeping the thing current. A lot of single person trades genuinely do not need one and we will say so rather than sell it.

And you see the site before you pay anything. We build a real working preview in 48 hours, you look at it, and if it is not right you say so and there is no cost and no chase.

Common questions

Written by Harry Taylor, co-founder of SH Studios. He designs the sites and works with the businesses that use them.