Do I need a website if I have social media?

Around 22% of UK small businesses still don't have a website. Many of them figure their Facebook page or Instagram account does the job. Sometimes it does. Most of the time, it doesn't — and the reasons matter more than you'd think.

The honest answer: sometimes social media is enough

Let's get this out of the way first. If you're a mobile hairdresser, a personal trainer working through referrals, or you sell handmade candles at weekend markets, you might genuinely not need a website right now. If every single customer finds you through word of mouth or Instagram DMs, and you're not trying to grow beyond that, a social media page can work.

But that's a very specific situation. And even then, you're making a bet that the platform you've built on won't change the rules.

Social media is rented land

Here's the thing nobody at Meta or TikTok will tell you: you don't own any of it. Your followers, your content, your reviews, your message history — all of it lives on someone else's servers, governed by someone else's rules.

Think about what that means in practice:

• Algorithm changes kill your reach. Facebook organic reach has fallen from 16% in 2012 to roughly 1.4% today. Instagram's average post reach dropped from 10–15% of followers in 2020 to 2–3% in 2025. You could have 5,000 followers and fewer than 100 of them see your post.
• Platforms go down. The October 2021 Facebook outage lasted over five hours and affected 3.5 billion users. Businesses that relied solely on Facebook and Instagram had no way to reach customers, take orders, or even answer questions. That one outage was called the largest communications outage in history.
• Platforms get banned. TikTok faced a US ban that threatened 7 million business accounts. Whether or not the ban sticks, it proved a point: governments can switch off a platform overnight, and your entire customer base goes with it.
• Accounts get suspended. Sometimes for no clear reason. Appeals take weeks. Your business is frozen while you wait for a support ticket to be reviewed by an algorithm.

A website is yours. Your domain, your hosting, your content. Nobody can change the algorithm on your own site.

What customers actually do before they buy

This is where the data gets uncomfortable for the social-media-only crowd.

81% of consumers research a business online before making a purchase. Not on Instagram — on Google. And 46% of all Google searches have local intent, meaning people are searching for businesses near them.

When they find you (or don't), here's what happens:

• 84% of consumers say a business with a website is more credible than one without.
• 62% of customers will ignore a business that has no web presence at all.
• 31% of shoppers have actively decided not to buy from a small business because it lacked a website.

That last one is worth sitting with. Nearly a third of potential customers walked away — not because the product was wrong or the price was too high, but because there was no website.

Can't people just find me on social media instead?

They can. But here's the difference: social media is a discovery tool. A website is a decision tool.

Someone might see your Instagram post and think "that looks good." But when they're actually ready to spend money, they'll Google your business name. They want to see a proper site with clear information, real contact details, and some proof that you're legitimate. A Facebook page with a cover photo from 2019 and three reviews doesn't inspire the same confidence.

74% of consumers say a reliable website increases their trust in a business. Social media as an industry sits at just 6% trust. That gap is enormous.

What a website does that social media can't

A website isn't just "another place to put your info." It does things that social media structurally cannot:

• You appear in Google. When someone searches "plumber near me" or "accountant in Bournemouth," Google shows websites. Not Instagram profiles. If you don't have a site, you're invisible to everyone who searches that way — and 97% of consumers search online for local businesses.
• You control the experience. On Instagram, your business sits between someone's holiday photos and a sponsored ad for meal kits. On your website, the customer's full attention is on you. No distractions, no competing content.
• You own your content. Blog posts, case studies, service descriptions — they live on your domain. They build SEO value over time. A great blog post can bring in traffic for years. An Instagram post has a lifespan of about 48 hours.
• You can actually sell. Booking forms, enquiry forms, e-commerce, quotes — your website can do all of this without paying a 5–20% platform fee or being limited by what Instagram's shopping feature supports this month.
• You collect data properly. With your own site, you can run analytics, track conversions, build an email list, and understand exactly how people find you. On social media, you get whatever metrics the platform decides to show you — and they change what's visible regularly.

The real question: what's your business built on?

If Instagram deleted your account tomorrow, what would you have left? If Facebook changed its algorithm again and your posts reached 0.5% of your followers instead of 1.4%, how would new customers find you?

This isn't a scare tactic. These things happen regularly. 87% of businesses reported significant reach declines over the past 18 months due to algorithm updates alone.

A website is your foundation. Social media is a megaphone. You need the megaphone to be heard — but you need the foundation so people have somewhere to land when they're ready to buy.

What about cost?

The most common reason small businesses skip a website is cost. But a professional small business website in the UK starts from around £500. That's less than most businesses spend on social media ads in a single month.

And unlike an ad that disappears the moment you stop paying, a website keeps working for you 24 hours a day, every day, for as long as you keep it online.

So what should I actually do?

Use both. That's the honest answer. Social media is brilliant for awareness, community, and staying visible. Keep posting, keep engaging, keep building your following. But make sure that effort is driving people somewhere you control.

Here's a practical approach:

• Get a website — even a simple one with your services, contact details, and a few testimonials. It doesn't need to be complicated.
• Link everything to it. Every social bio, every post CTA, every Google Business listing should point back to your site.
• Build an email list. Your email subscribers are yours. Unlike followers, no algorithm decides whether they see your message.
• Think of social media as the top of the funnel. It gets attention. Your website converts that attention into actual business.

The bottom line

Social media is a powerful tool. But it's someone else's tool, running on someone else's rules, and those rules change without warning. A website gives you a permanent, credible home online that you own outright.

For the price of a few months of boosted posts, you could have something that actually belongs to you.