Is a Facebook page enough for your business?

Plenty of good businesses run on a Facebook page and a phone number. If that is you and the work keeps coming, nobody should talk you into spending money. This article is for the owner who is not sure: the page works, sort of, but the enquiries are patchy, and a mate has said you need a website. Here is the honest version.

When a page is enough

A Facebook or Instagram page is free, takes an hour to set up, and puts you where a great many people already spend their time. Ofcom’s Online Nation 2025 report found UK adults spend about four and a half hours a day online on their own devices, most of it on a phone, and that Meta’s services are among the most widely used. That is where your customers are.

A page is probably enough when:

• Your work comes by word of mouth and the page exists so people can find your number and see recent photos.
• You are at capacity. A plumber booked three weeks ahead does not need more enquiries; they need fewer.
• You are testing an idea and want to know whether anyone will buy before you spend anything.
• Your customers are a community, a village, a school, a club, and they already follow you there.

In those cases a well-kept page with your hours, your area and a way to message you is doing the job. Keep it up to date and get on with the work.

When it is not

The problems start when you want to be found by people who do not already know you. That is most of the growth any small business will ever get, and a page is poor at it, for four concrete reasons.

People search Google, not Facebook

Someone with a leaking tap types “emergency plumber” and a town into Google. Someone with a birthday to plan types “afternoon tea” and a town. Google’s results show websites and Google Business Profile listings. A Facebook page can appear, but it is competing with every business that has a real site, and the page content is written for followers, not for someone searching. A short website with one page per service and your towns written out plainly is what matches those searches. Google’s own guidance says it uses the mobile version of a site’s content for indexing and ranking, which is why the site also has to work on a phone first.

Your Google Business Profile wants a website to point at

The Google Business Profile is the box with the map, the hours and the reviews that appears when people search for a local business. It is free and it is the single most valuable listing a local business has. Google’s guidelines let you link the profile to a website, as long as the address represents your business and does not bounce people somewhere else. Without a site, the “Website” button is missing, and the people who click it, which is the people who want to know more before they call, go to the next listing instead.

You do not control the page

On 4 October 2021 Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp went down for about six hours. The Associated Press reported small businesses around the world losing bookings and orders for the afternoon, with no way to reach customers and nothing to do but wait. Outages are rare; the point is what they reveal. Your page is on someone else’s platform. They decide who sees your posts, what the page looks like, whether you can be contacted, and whether the page exists at all. If the account is locked, which happens to honest businesses for reasons nobody will explain, the number everyone has for you goes dark.

A website on a domain you own is yours. It is there whatever Meta decides.

Credibility, and the people who do not use Facebook

Some of your customers are not on Facebook. Some are on it and do not trust a business that has nothing else. Commercial customers, landlords, letting agents and anyone placing a larger order will look for a website before they ring, and a search that finds only a page tells them you are small, new, or both. That might be true and still not be what you want them to think first.

What a small local site actually needs

If you decide a site is worth having, here is the whole list. It is shorter than most people expect, and most of it applies whether you are a trade, a café, a salon or a clinic.

1. Your phone number at the top of every page, set up so a tap on a phone dials it. On a phone, the number is the site.
2. Where you work, in the first line. The towns or the radius. People want to know whether you are local before anything else.
3. What you do, one page or section per service, in plain words. Not a brochure. A list someone can scan in ten seconds.
4. Proof. Real photos of your work, and a few real reviews near the phone number rather than on a page of their own. Reviews on your Google profile count for more than reviews on your site, so link to them.
5. The things people need to trust you. A heating engineer shows the Gas Safe registration number as text, so a customer can check it on the Gas Safe Register. An electrician shows the scheme they are registered with. A clinic shows who is qualified in what.
6. Hours and the address, matching your Google profile exactly, and kept up to date on both.
7. A way to get in touch that works on a phone. A short form, your email and your number. If the form breaks, nobody tells you; test it.

For a café or restaurant, add the menu as text on the page rather than as a photo or a PDF, so it can be read on a phone and found in search, and keep allergen information available in writing. The Food Standards Agency’s allergen guidance sets out what food businesses must provide and the written formats it recommends. For a salon or clinic, add the price list and a booking link.

What you can leave out: an “about us” page nobody reads, a blog you will not keep up, a mission statement, and anything animated.

Keep the page, add the site

This is not a choice between the two. The page is where you post the job you finished today and the new menu; the site is the thing that is there at two in the morning when someone searches, and the thing you own if the page ever disappears. The site links to the page and the page links to the site. Your Google profile links to both.

If you build the site yourself, the comparison in Wix, Squarespace or Shopify will help you pick a tool. If you would rather someone did it for you, we design and build sites for exactly these businesses and send a fixed quote in writing within one working day. Either way, read who owns your website before you register a domain, because the one thing worse than being on someone else’s platform is paying for a site and finding out it is on someone else’s platform too.