Do You Actually Need a Website, or Is Facebook Enough?

Intro

If your business is on Facebook and you're getting customers from it, that's real and it's great. I'm not going to try to tell you it isn't working. For a lot of small businesses a Facebook page will be the first online presence they ever had, and some of them have been running on it for years.

But there's a difference between something working and something being enough.

You don't own it.

This is the biggest one for me personally and I think this is something people don't think about until it's too late. Your Facebook page, your followers, your years of posts and reviews, none of that is yours. It lives on Meta's platform under Meta's rules, and those rules change constantly. Reach that used to be free now costs money. Algorithms shift. Accounts get flagged, locked, or disabled for reasons that are nearly impossible to appeal. Businesses have lost everything overnight with no recourse.

A website is yours. The domain, the content, the contact form, nobody can take that away or decide to show it to fewer people this quarter.

Google can't find your Facebook page.

This is the bigger problem for most small businesses. When someone searches "electrician Inverness NS" or "birthday cake Cape Breton" - they're on Google, not Facebook. And Google returns websites, not Facebook pages. If you don't have a website, you're invisible to everyone who doesn't already know to look for you specifically on Facebook.

That's a lot of customers you're never meeting.

The trust problem

People Google businesses before they call. It's just habit at this point. If someone hears about you through word of mouth and types your name into Google and nothing comes up, no website, maybe a sparse Facebook page.. there's a moment of doubt. It might be small, but it's there. A clean, professional website removes that doubt before it becomes a reason not to call.

When Facebook actually is enough

To be fair: if your business runs entirely on repeat customers and personal referrals, and you're not trying to grow, a Facebook page might genuinely be sufficient. Community organizations, small local events, hobby businesses.. there are cases where a full website would actually be overkill. I can admit that.

But if you want new customers to find you, if you want to show up when someone searches for what you do, if you want to look like an established business rather than a side project - you need a website.

The final verdict

It's not either/or. The best setup is a website as your home base, with Facebook driving traffic to it. Your website is where people land, learn about you, and get in touch. Facebook is where you stay visible to people who already know you.

One without the other is half a strategy.