This comes up in almost every first conversation we have with a small business. The page is already there, it costs nothing, customers message it, and a website feels like an expense with no obvious return. That reasoning is fair, and it holds up until it does not.
Where a Facebook page alone works fine
A page is genuinely enough for some businesses.
- Your customers find you by word of mouth and then look you up by name.
- What you sell changes often, such as a food truck location or seasonal stock.
- Most of your selling happens in conversation, through comments and messages.
- You are testing an idea and do not want to commit money yet.
If that describes you, put your effort into posting regularly and answering messages quickly. A half finished website will not help you.
Where it starts costing you
The gap shows up in four places.
People search for the service, not for you
Someone with a broken security camera searches for CCTV repair in Auckland. They do not search for your business name, because they have never heard of it. Google answers that search with web pages about CCTV repair. A Facebook page rarely competes there.
You do not control the page
The layout, what shows first, what gets seen by your followers and whether the account exists at all are decided by someone else. Pages get restricted by mistake and take weeks to recover. Your website is yours.
It is hard to look established
For a larger job, people check whether you look like a real business. A page with eleven followers and a post from last year answers that question badly, whatever the quality of your work.
You cannot see what is working
A website tells you which services people looked at, what they searched to find you and where they gave up. That information is what turns guesswork into decisions.
The order we would build it in
If you are starting from nothing, this order gives you the most for the least.
- Google Business Profile first. It is free, it puts you on the map, and for local services it brings more enquiries than anything else on this list.
- A small website second. Five pages is plenty. Home, what you do, the work you have done, about, contact. One page for each main service if you can.
- Social media third. It is where you show personality and stay in front of people who already know you. It is the weakest of the three at reaching someone who has never heard of you.
What a small site actually needs
It does not need to be large. It needs to load fast on a phone, say plainly what you do and where, make it obvious how to get in touch on every screen, and have a page for each service you want to be found for. That is it. Everything past that point is improvement, not foundation.
Keep the page
None of this is an argument for closing your Facebook page. It is an argument for it not being the only place you exist. The page holds the people who already know you. The website and the Google profile bring you the people who do not.
If you are weighing this up for your own business, tell us what you do and we will give you an honest view on whether a website would earn its money. There is no charge for that.
Frequently asked questions
Can I run a business on a Facebook page alone?
You can, and many do. It works best when your customers already follow you and you sell through conversation. It works poorly when people search for your service rather than your name.
Will a Facebook page show up in Google?
Sometimes, for your business name. It rarely shows up for the service searches that bring new customers, because Google prefers pages built around that service.
Is a website still worth it in 2026?
For any business that people search for rather than stumble across, yes. The website is the only part of your online presence that you control and that Google can rank properly.
What if I cannot afford both?
Start with the Google Business Profile, which is free, then a small website. Social media is the easiest of the three to add later.