Can a Facebook page replace your website

Compared 6 min read

What a Facebook page genuinely covers for a local business, the four things it cannot hold, and how to tell whether you need a site of your own as well.

Your page has been going for years. People find you on it, message you on it, and it has never cost you anything. Now somebody says you need a proper website, and it is fair to ask what for.

What a Facebook page does better than a website

It is where people already are, so nobody has to remember an address to find you. You can post from your phone in a gap between jobs, and you will, which is more than most owners manage with a website. People can share a post with a neighbor in one tap, and that neighbor trusts a friend's recommendation more than any page ever written about you.

It also holds the things that only matter this week: the van is off the road, we are closed Thursday, here is the job finished this morning. A website is bad at that, and a page is built for it.

None of that is worth throwing away, so the useful question is what the page cannot do.

The customers who will never see it

Some people looking for you will never look on Facebook.

There are people who never had an account, people who deleted theirs, and people looking you up from a work computer where it is blocked. There is the person at the kitchen table at ten at night who types your trade and their town into a search box and calls whichever result answers fastest.

There is also the reach question: how many of your own followers see a given post is not decided by you. You can write it, but you cannot make it arrive. The page is borrowed, on somebody else's system, and the rules can change without you being told.

What your page looks like to a stranger

Open your own page in a private browsing window, signed out, on your phone. It takes a minute and it is the most useful thing here.

You may find a sign-in prompt over the top. You may find your hours are not visible without tapping through. You may find the first thing a stranger meets is a birthday post rather than what you do and where.

That is what a new customer sees, rather than the signed-in version you know.

The day the account goes

This is the argument that matters most. A page is attached to personal profiles. If the profile that administers it is hacked, locked, or disabled by an automated system, the page can go quiet with it. That happens to people who have done nothing wrong, and there is no counter to walk up to. You fill out a form and wait, and while you wait your only address on the internet is not answering.

Compare that with a domain of your own. It is rented from a registrar, but rented in your name, with your card, and if a host goes bad you move it elsewhere in an afternoon.

None of this makes Facebook dangerous. The risk is having one address, on a system you do not control, which is the same as having no spare key.

Where your hours, prices and service area actually live

A page is a stream. Anything you post is at the top for a day and gone by the following week.

So the things a customer needs most often are the things a page holds worst: what you charge to come out, which towns you cover, your hours over a holiday weekend. Those live in an About tab few people open, or in a reply to a comment from March that nobody will find again.

That is why the same three questions arrive every week. You have answered them a hundred times; the page has nowhere to keep the answers.

Messages are a promise you have to keep

Messaging is the best thing about the page and the most expensive.

Somebody who messages a business on Facebook expects an answer quickly, and Facebook is happy to show visitors how quickly you usually manage it. That is a fair test if you sit at a desk. It is a hard one if you are under a sink with gloves on until six.

An email inquiry does not advertise how long it sat there. It waits, it is searchable next year, and it is not in the same inbox as your cousin's vacation photos. Give people a second way in that does not run on a clock: a number to call and a form that emails you.

The answer most owners land on

You do not have to choose, and this is a case where the honest advice costs a sale.

If you are a market stall, a mobile trader in one town, or at capacity on word of mouth, the page may be enough, and you should not pay anybody to change that. Spend the money on a better sign.

For most others the arrangement is both, with different jobs. The page keeps doing news, finished work and conversation, because it is better at those than any website. A site of your own holds the permanent facts: services, towns, hours, prices if you publish them, and a form that lands in your email. It is the address on the van, and it works for the person without an account.

A build here is $1,450, once, and it is yours outright. Website Care at $149 a month covers hosting, backups, the form and twenty minutes of changes a month if you would rather not think about it. Neither replaces the page.

A short checklist if the page is all you have

• Open your page signed out, in a private window, on a phone, and look at it as a stranger
• Get your phone number, service area and hours into the About section rather than a post
• Pin a post that answers the three questions you are asked every week
• Make sure at least two people, or you and one other, administer the page
• Put a way to reach you that is not a Facebook message, so an inquiry can wait safely
• Register a domain name in your own name today, even if nothing is built on it yet
• Keep your photographs on your own phone or computer, not only on the page
• Ask new customers how they found you, and write the answers down for a month

Questions people ask

Can I use a Facebook page instead of a website

You can, and some small local businesses do fine that way. You are trading control for convenience: the page is easier and free, and it is not an address you own.

Do I need a website if I have a Facebook page

If your customers are all local and already on Facebook, maybe not. If people look for your trade in a search box, or you are asked the same questions constantly, a small site does work the page cannot.

Will my Facebook page show up on Google

A page can appear in search results, but what shows there is shaped by Facebook, and you cannot add a page for each service or town the way you can on your own site.

What happens to my page if my Facebook account is disabled

The page can become inaccessible with the profile that administers it. Recovery goes through a form and takes as long as it takes, which is why a second administrator is worth setting up today.

Is it bad to send customers to my Facebook page from a business card

It works, but it sends them to a page that asks some of them to sign in. A short domain of your own is easier to say down the phone and works for everybody.

Can I keep the page if I get a website built

Yes, and you should. Keep posting the news and the finished work there, and let the site hold the facts people need at ten at night.