Do I need a website if I already have a Facebook page?

It is one of the most common questions I hear from local business owners, and it is a fair one. You already have a Facebook page. People follow it. You post your work there. So why pay for a website too?

Here is the honest answer, from someone who builds websites for a living but also runs a Facebook page and finds plenty of customers in local groups: a Facebook page is a great start, but on its own it leaves you invisible to a lot of the people who are actively trying to find you. The good news is you do not have to choose. The two work better together. Let me walk through why.

First, what Facebook is genuinely great at

This is not an anti-Facebook post. For a local business, a Facebook page does real work. It is where word of mouth lives. When someone asks "can anyone recommend a good electrician?" in a local group, that is Facebook earning its keep. It is great for community, quick updates, posting photos of recent jobs, and letting people message you fast. (If those messages are piling up, here is how to handle more customers without hiring.)

And people do use it to check you out. About 37% of consumers use Facebook to read reviews of local businesses, and roughly a third trust it as a source of business information (BrightLocal, 2024). So keep your page. Post to it. None of what follows means you should walk away from Facebook.

Where a Facebook-only presence quietly costs you customers

The problem is not what Facebook does well. It is what it cannot do. Here is the gap.

1. When people are ready to buy, they go to Google, not Facebook

There is a difference between scrolling and searching. People scroll Facebook to pass the time. They go to Google when they actually need something. And the numbers are lopsided: 72% of consumers use Google to find information about a local business, and 81% use Google to read local reviews, versus just 37% on Facebook (BrightLocal, 2024).

2. People cross-check, and an empty Google result looks like a red flag

Customers do not trust just one source. 74% of people use two or more sources when researching a business (BrightLocal, 2024). They see your Facebook page, then they Google your name to confirm you are real. If nothing solid comes up, a small doubt creeps in. A simple website is what closes that doubt.

3. A website is the thing Google actually ranks

This is the part most people do not know. Your website is the single biggest factor in whether you show up in Google's local search results. In the industry's annual ranking-factors survey, on-page website signals are the largest driver of local organic rankings, around 33% (BrightLocal, 2026). Google's own help docs say your visibility depends partly on how many other websites link to you. A Facebook page does not give you any of that. No website, no real foothold in search. (And increasingly, no foothold with AI either: here is how customers now use AI to find local businesses.)

4. You do not actually own your Facebook page

You built your following. But you do not control who sees your posts, and you do not own the page. Facebook does. Over the years, organic reach for business pages has fallen off a cliff: from about 16% of your followers in 2012 to roughly 1 to 2% today (Hootsuite, 2025). That means if you have 500 followers, a typical post might reach 5 to 10 of them unless you pay to boost it.

A website is different. It is yours. The design, the content, the way people contact you, all of it is under your control, and no algorithm change can quietly throttle it overnight. You are renting your Facebook audience. You own your website.

5. A website still signals "real and here to stay"

Especially for a newer business, a website reads as legitimate. In one 2026 survey by web host DreamHost, 69% of consumers said a website is essential for a local business to be credible, ranking it the second most important trust signal behind online reviews. Take that one with a grain of salt, since a web host has an interest in the answer, but it lines up with what I see: a simple, clean site makes a small business look established. You can see a few examples of sites I have built for local businesses.

You do not need a big, expensive website

Here is the myth that keeps people on Facebook only: that a website means thousands of dollars and months of work. It does not. A simple one-page site that loads fast, says what you do and where, and shows up on Google does the job for most local businesses. (Here is what a small business website actually costs.)

And it is becoming the norm. 83% of small businesses now have a website, up from about 64% in 2018 (Clutch, 2025). Of the ones that still do not, most admit they are missing out on search visibility and lead generation. You do not want to be the business a customer cannot find.

The best setup is both, working as a system

This is the real answer. It was never website versus Facebook. The businesses that win locally use three things that feed each other:

• 1.A website as your home base, the part you own, that Google ranks and that customers trust.
• 2.A Google Business Profile, the free listing that puts you on the map for "near me" searches.
• 3.Your Facebook page for community, word of mouth, and staying in front of people who already know you.

Keep the Facebook page. Add the website. Set up the Google profile. Each one catches customers the others miss.

Where these numbers come from: BrightLocal Local Consumer Review Survey (2024) and Local Search Ranking Factors (2026); Clutch State of Small Business Websites (2025); DreamHost Local Business Trust Index (2026); Hootsuite organic reach data (2025). These are national U.S. figures, but they match what I see with local businesses here in the Capital Region.