Do you still need a website if you have a Facebook page?

It's a fair question. Facebook is free, you already know how it works, and your customers are on it. Some businesses genuinely do fine with social only. But the trade-offs are bigger and quieter than they look.

What you give up without a website

Google visibility. When someone searches "dog groomer near me", websites rank. Facebook pages barely do. Social-only businesses are largely invisible at the exact moment someone is actively looking to buy — which is the highest-intent traffic that exists.

Trust with strangers. Your regulars don't need convincing. Strangers do — and a business with no website reads as smaller, newer or less established than it is. Fairly or not, "do they have a proper website?" is a credibility check many people run before spending real money.

Control. Your Facebook page exists at Meta's pleasure. Reach on posts has fallen year after year — pages routinely reach single-digit percentages of their own followers without paying. Accounts get restricted or hacked, and support is famously unreachable. Businesses have lost years of presence overnight with no appeal that works. Rented ground can be repossessed.

The whole experience. Booking, prices, FAQs, galleries organised your way, a form that lands in your inbox — on Facebook you're squeezing your business into someone else's template, interrupted by ads for your competitors.

What Facebook still does better

Honesty cuts both ways. Social is genuinely better for community, ongoing conversation, showing daily work, and staying visible to existing customers. Local Facebook groups drive real word-of-mouth. None of that should stop — the argument isn't website instead of social.

When social-only is actually fine

• You're at capacity from word-of-mouth and genuinely don't want more enquiries
• You're testing a side project and aren't ready to invest anything
• Your entire customer base is a tight local community that already knows you

If that's you, carry on — sincerely. The problem is that most businesses saying "Facebook is enough" actually mean "a website feels like hassle and expense", which is a different statement.

The setup that wins

Website as the foundation — the thing Google finds, the place strangers verify you, the asset you control — with social feeding activity and personality into it. Even a sharp one-page site with your services, prices, proof and a contact form covers the gap. Link it from your Facebook page and every post becomes a path to a place where enquiring is easy.

Facebook is where people bump into you. A website is where they decide to trust you. Most businesses need both, and the second one is the one you own.