Do I Need a Website If I Have a Facebook Page?
You'd expect someone who builds websites to say yes. So let me start with the cases where the answer is no.
When you don't need one
Your work comes entirely by word of mouth and you're busy enough. If you're a plasterer with a full diary until next spring and every job comes from someone who knows someone, a website is not your priority. Spend the money elsewhere or keep it.
You're testing an idea. If you're not sure the business will still exist in six months, a Facebook page is a perfectly sensible place to start. Prove there's demand first.
You genuinely sell through Facebook. Some businesses do — resellers, certain craft sellers, people whose whole trade runs through local buy-and-sell groups. If that's actually where your money comes from, don't let anyone talk you out of it.
You'd never update it. A website that still shows last year's prices and hours from two moves ago is worse than none at all. If you know yourself well enough to know you won't touch it, either pay someone to look after it or don't get one.
That's a real list, not a token one. Plenty of small businesses are fine without a website and there's no point pretending otherwise.
Where a Facebook page falls down
You don't own it. This is the big one. Your page exists at Meta's discretion. Pages get suspended by automated systems, sometimes wrongly, and getting one back is difficult with no one to ring. Everything you've built — your posts, your followers, your reviews, your photos — can go overnight, and there's no appeal you can rely on.
Ask anyone who's had a page disabled for no reason they could identify. It happens more than people think.
Not everyone is on it. A significant share of people don't use Facebook, and a lot who do won't log in to look up a business. If someone has to sign into an account to find your opening hours, some of them won't bother.
You can't control what appears around you. Your page sits inside a feed with ads, arguments, and whatever else is going on that day. You have no say in what a potential customer sees next to your work.
It's built for posting, not explaining. Facebook shows the most recent thing. It's poor at answering "what do you do, what does it cost, and where do you cover" — which is what a customer actually wants. Your best explanation of your services is buried under sixty posts.
Google can't read most of it. This is the one that costs you real money. When someone searches "electrician Carlow", Google returns websites and Google Business Profiles. It largely doesn't return Facebook pages. So every one of those searches is happening without you in it.
Reach is at their discretion. Facebook decides how many of your followers see any given post, and that number has only ever gone one direction. You're building on land you're renting, and the rent goes up.
What a website does that a page can't
It's yours. Your domain, your content, nobody's algorithm. If it goes down you can ring someone. Nobody can take it away.
It answers questions in the right order. Services, areas covered, prices, how to get in touch — laid out as a customer would want them rather than in reverse chronological order.
It shows up in search. Along with a Google Business Profile, this is how you get found by people who don't already know you exist. That's the whole point.
It looks like a real business. Fair or not, www.yourbusiness.ie reads differently to a Facebook link. For anything where the customer is spending real money or letting you into their house, that matters.
You can send people to it. One link, on your van, your invoice, your card, your email signature, and it works for everyone regardless of what they use.
The answer for most people: both
This isn't really an either-or, and treating it as one is where the question goes wrong.
Your website is where people go when they're deciding. It's your shop front, it's what Google finds, and it's the thing you own.
Your Facebook page is where you keep in touch with people who already know you. Posts about a job you finished, a change in hours, something you're offering this month.
They do different jobs. Facebook is a conversation; a website is an answer.
And crucially — your Facebook page should link to your website, so the people who find you there can get the full picture, and so the traffic ends up somewhere you control.
The one you should do first
Neither, actually.
If you have to pick one thing to do this month, claim your Google Business Profile. It's free, it takes an hour, and for a local business it does more than a website and a Facebook page combined.
It's what puts you on the map when someone searches "near me". It shows your hours, your phone number, your photos and your reviews, directly in the search results, before anyone has to click anything.
Anyone who tries to sell you a website without first asking whether your Google listing is sorted is not looking after you.
How to decide
Ask yourself where your next ten customers will come from.
"People who already know me." Facebook page, Google listing, and put the money towards something else. Come back to the website when you want to grow beyond that.
"People searching online for what I do." You need a website and a Google listing. A Facebook page won't get you into those searches.
"A mix." Do the Google listing now, get a small website when you can, and keep the Facebook page ticking over for the people who already follow you.
If you do get one, keep it small
The most common mistake is not skipping the website. It's getting one that's too big.
A small business needs four or five pages: what you do, who you are, where you cover, how to get in touch, and your prices if you're brave enough to publish them. That's it. Nobody is reading your twelve-page site.
Smaller is cheaper, faster, easier to keep current, and more likely to actually get finished.
Not sure which side of this you fall on? The first conversation is free and there's no obligation. If I think your money is better spent on your Google listing than on a website, I'll tell you that.