Do I need a website if I have a Facebook page?
Plenty of trades run entirely on a Facebook page and do perfectly well. If that is you, anybody telling you the page is worthless is selling something. It is free, your customers are already on it, and word of mouth travels further there than it ever did in a paper directory.
But a Facebook page and a website do two different jobs, and the gap between them is where the lost work sits. This page is about what the page genuinely does well, what it cannot do at all, and how to tell which of those is costing you.
What a Facebook page does better than a website
Reach through people who already know you. A recommendation in a local group reaches a few thousand people who trust the person recommending you, and no website on earth does that.
Proof of life. A page posting photographs of last week's job tells a customer you are working and findable now, which is the single thing a neglected website fails to say.
Messaging. People will send a Facebook message at ten at night when they would not ring, and for a lot of trades that is where most first contact happens.
What it cannot do, however good your page is
It cannot be found on Google by somebody searching for your service. This is the big one. When a stranger types roofer in a town into Google, Facebook pages rarely appear. The results are websites and Google Business Profiles. If the page is all you have, you are invisible to everybody who has not already heard of you.
It cannot be controlled. The page is on land you rent. Reach is decided by an algorithm that changes without notice, pages get restricted or hacked, and a business whose entire customer route runs through one Facebook account is one lockout away from silence. Ask anybody it has happened to.
It cannot answer questions in order. Prices, service areas, what you do and do not take on, insurance, how to get a quote: on a page, all of that is buried somewhere in a scroll of posts. On a website it is four links.
It cannot be sent to somebody formal. A commercial customer, a letting agent or a main contractor asking for your details wants a link that looks like a company, not a social profile.
The test that settles it
Open Google on your phone and search for your own trade and your own town, the way a stranger would. Not your business name. If you are nowhere in those results, that is the work you are not getting, and no amount of posting will change it, because that search does not look at Facebook.
Then ask where your last ten jobs came from. If all ten were recommendations, the page is doing its job and a website is about growth rather than rescue. If some came from people who found you, and more of them are asking questions your page answers badly, the website is overdue.
What a website gives you that is genuinely worth paying for
A route in from Google for people who have never heard of you, which is the whole point.
A place you own. The domain is yours, the content is yours, and no platform can restrict it.
Pages that answer the repetitive questions once, so you stop typing the same reply.
Something to put on the van, the invoice, the quote and the Facebook page itself, which makes the business look like a business.
Somewhere ads and listings can send people. Paid traffic to a Facebook page converts worse than paid traffic to a page built to take an enquiry.
Use both, and link them
The right answer for most trades is not one or the other. Keep the page busy, because that is where the recommendations happen, and let it link to a website that can be found by strangers and can answer questions in order.
Put the website address in the page's About section, in the pinned post and on every job photograph you share. Put your Facebook link in the website footer. People who find you on one should be able to check you on the other, and both should agree on the phone number.
Common questions
- Will a website get me work if I already get plenty from Facebook?
- It gets you a different sort of work: people searching for your service who have never heard of you. If your current work is all recommendations, a website widens the top of the funnel rather than replacing what you have.
- Can a Facebook page rank on Google?
- Occasionally, for your business name. For competitive service-and-town searches it is rare, because Google prefers websites and Business Profiles for those. You should not plan around it.
- Is a free website builder good enough?
- It can be, if you have the evenings to learn it and to keep it maintained. The costs people do not price in are the subscription, the time, and what happens in two years when it needs updating and nobody remembers the login. Compare on three years, not on the first month.
- What about a Google Business Profile instead?
- Set one up either way, it is free and for local searches it is the most valuable thing you can do. It works best pointing at a website, because the profile gets you into the map results and the website answers what happens after someone taps through.
- I am a sole trader. Is a website overkill?
- It depends on whether strangers ever need to find you. A sole trader with a full diary from repeat customers may genuinely not need one. A sole trader who wants to choose better jobs, charge more, or work in a new area almost always does.
If you would rather somebody just did it
I build websites for self-employed tradesmen and small businesses across the UK: £249 to build, then £49.99 a month to host, maintain and update it. The sites I have built currently hold 97 page-one Google rankings between them.