Why Every Small Business Needs a Website in Addition to Social Media

Every so often a business owner tells me some version of the same thing: “I don’t need a website — I’ve got a Facebook page.” And I get it. Social media is free, it takes ten minutes to set up, and your customers are already scrolling it. For a brand-new business, honestly, it might even be enough for a while.

But I’ve seen what happens a few years in, and it’s why I tell every client the same thing: social media is where people find you; your website is where they decide to trust you.

The part nobody mentions when you build your business on a social platform is that you’re renting. The landlord can change the rules whenever they want, and they do. Post to your thousand followers and only a small slice of them will ever see it — unless you pay to boost it, which is exactly how the landlord likes it. Accounts get locked or flagged by automated systems all the time, and when it happens there’s no support line to call. I’ve talked with owners who lost years of content and their entire audience overnight, and whose appeals disappeared into a void. Your website is the one piece of your online presence that nobody can take away, throttle, or quietly bury under an algorithm change.

Then there’s the small matter of Google. When someone searches “bookkeeper near me” or “wedding photographer in Phoenix,” the results are websites. You can’t really compete for those searches with a Facebook page — there’s nothing there to optimize. A website gives you pages that answer the exact questions your customers are typing into the search bar, which means a steady trickle of new customers who were never going to find you by scrolling.

Honestly, though, the thing I think matters most is quieter than either of those. Think about your own behavior for a second. You hear about a company, you look them up, and there’s no website — just a Facebook page last updated eight months ago. Didn’t they just lose a little credibility with you? Your customers run that same math on you, and they run it in about five seconds. A clean, current website says somebody is home and takes this business seriously. Most of the time, that first impression is finished before anyone ever calls.

A website also gives all the practical stuff a permanent home. Your hours, your services, your pricing, your story, the answers to the five questions you type into DMs every single week — on social media that information is scattered across old posts, but on your site it lives on one page you control, and you can just send people the link. More than one of my clients has noticed the repetitive questions quiet down once the answers had somewhere permanent to live.

None of this means abandoning social media. It’s still the best free marketing a small business can get, and the right answer is almost never either/or. The author websites I’ve built work exactly this way: readers discover the author on social media, but the mailing list signup, the book catalog, and the reviews all live on the website. The social account feeds the site, and the site captures the audience the author actually owns — so when a platform inevitably changes its rules, the mailing list doesn’t care.

If you’ve been getting by on a Facebook page and you’re wondering whether it’s time for a real website, send me a message. I’ll give you an honest read on your situation — including “not yet,” if that’s the truth.