This month we looked at two local businesses whose Google listings have no website at all, so the Website button simply doesn’t appear. Plenty of businesses run on a Facebook page alone, and it works until it doesn’t.
What a Facebook page does well
- It’s free, quick to set up, and your customers already use the app.
- Posts, photos and events reach the people who follow you, and they can share them.
- Messages and reviews are easy for customers who are already logged in.
Where a Facebook-only business loses customers
- Google doesn’t send people to it. Someone searching “plumber near me” or “wedding DJ Myrtle Beach” is shown websites and map listings. A Facebook page rarely ranks for what customers actually type.
- Not everyone has an account, and Facebook shows logged-out visitors a sign-in prompt over your page.
- You don’t own it. A locked account, a hacked admin, or a policy change can take the page away, with no one to call. A website and domain in your name can’t be switched off by someone else.
- It can’t do the work. Taking a booking with a deposit, a quote request with photos, an online store, a client portal: those need a website.
- AI assistants can’t read most of it. When someone asks ChatGPT who to hire, it answers from what it can read on the open web, and Facebook pages mostly aren’t that.
How they work together
Use the website as home base: your services, prices or price ranges, hours, reviews, and the way to book or buy. Use Facebook to reach people and send them there. Put the website on your Facebook page and your Google listing, and make sure all three show the same phone number and hours.
Written by Nikita Huttenlocher, founder and lead engineer at Huttenlocher Technologies, a web design and software company in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.