Yes, if strangers have to find you before they can buy from you. No, if your next customer already knows your name. That is the whole test, and it has nothing to do with how big you are. A café on Ridge Road in Ridgeway whose trade walks in off the sidewalk can run on a Facebook page for years. A plumber working out of a van in Fort Erie lives on people who type "plumber Fort Erie" into Google at nine at night, and those people are not scrolling a feed looking for him. The rest of this guide is the mechanism behind that test, so you can apply it yourself.
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Give the page its due first
A Facebook page is free, you set it up in an evening, and it does three jobs well. It shows the people who already follow you that you are open, and it gives them a place to send a quick message. It also lets you post the thing that came out of the oven this morning without asking anyone's permission. Meta's own help page describes Pages as being "for businesses, brands, organizations and public figures to share updates and connect with people," and for that job it is good software.
I build websites for a living, so you would expect me to tell you the page is not enough. The honest version is narrower. The page is enough for the people who already know you. It is a poor tool for the people who don't, and the reasons are mechanical rather than a matter of taste.
Three things the page decides for you
Who sees a post is Meta's call, not yours. Meta's explanation of Feed ranking says the system works in four steps. It says "we use thousands of different signals to make predictions about whether you'll find something more or less valuable." It also says that "because Feed ranking is personalized, the relative impact of each prediction model on Feed will vary depending on the person and the content." In plain words, somebody following your page is no promise that they see your post about the long weekend hours. And Meta says on the same page that "the information outlined here might change over time," so what worked last winter is no guide to this one.
A search engine has one page of yours to work with. Google describes Search in three stages: crawlers that download pages, an index that stores what they found, and results served to match what somebody typed. Your Facebook page is one page, on facebook.com, in Meta's layout. If you clear drains, replace water heaters and thaw frozen pipes, none of those is a page of its own anywhere. So there is nothing separate for Google to store and serve when someone types "water heater Fort Erie." A site gives each service its own page, which is the part a search engine can actually use. Worth knowing on the way in: Google says plainly that it "doesn't guarantee that it will crawl, index, or serve your page," so a site is a chance at those searches rather than a promise. A page on facebook.com is not even the chance.
The rules are Meta's. The Facebook Pages Terms make you "responsible for ensuring that your Page complies with all applicable laws." They also say Meta "may remove administrative rights or require you to change the Page name and Facebook Web Address" for a Page that fails its naming requirement. None of that is sinister. It does mean the address people know you by is one Meta can require you to change.
What you own on your own site: the web address, registered in your business name, and every page on it. Nobody ranks your home page against a cousin's holiday photos, nobody can require you to rename it, and it is still there the quarter a platform changes what it shows.
| A customer wants to | On your Facebook page | On your own site |
|---|---|---|
| Find you by what you do, not your name | One page on facebook.com, so "water heater Fort Erie" has nothing separate to match | A page for each service and each town, written the way people search |
| See your hours and number without scrolling | Whatever the current Page layout puts first | Phone, address and hours in the first screenful, where you put them |
| Read your prices | Posted once, then buried under newer posts, or typed into Messenger again | A price list that stays where it is |
| Know which towns you serve | A line in the About box | Fort Erie, Ridgeway, Stevensville and Buffalo named in the page text |
| Trust that the address will still work next year | Meta's terms let Meta require a name and address change | Yours, for as long as you renew the domain |
The page is enough for the people who already know you.
When Facebook alone is enough
Take the Ridgeway café, an illustration rather than a client. It opens at seven, the regulars are the same faces, and a new customer is someone who walked past and smelled the coffee. Its page shows the hours, a photo of the day's baking, and a closure notice at Christmas. A website would not bring that café a single extra person through the door this year, and I would tell the owner so before they spent a dollar with me.
The page is enough when all three of these are true.
- Your customers come by walking past, by the sign, or by someone saying your name.
- You are not trying to be found for a service, only for who you are.
- You have one thing to sell and one place to sell it, so there is nothing that needs a page of its own.
A side business still being tested at the Saturday market fits the page too. Prove people want it before you spend money proving you are serious.
When it stops being enough
Now take a landscaper out of Stevensville, also an illustration. Lawn cutting in summer, spring and fall cleanups, snow from December on. Three services, three seasons, and every one of them starts with a stranger typing "snow removal Stevensville" or "spring cleanup Fort Erie" into a search box. On the Facebook page all three services share one About box and one stream of posts, and by August the snow post is a long scroll down. On a site each service gets its own page, with the towns named in plain text, so the snow page is sitting there in November for the person who needs it. The plumbing van has the same shape: nobody walks past a van, and every call is from someone who searched first.
Customers from the Buffalo side add a version of the same problem. Someone in Amherst weighing a drive over the Peace Bridge wants to know whether you serve their side, whether a US card works, and whether the price is Canadian dollars. Those are answers a page's About box was not built to hold, and the guide to selling across the border covers what a page for those customers needs to say.
Neither of them should delete the page. It keeps the people who already know them: today's finished job, the holiday closure, the quick reply. The site takes the stranger who searched. Link each one to the other.
What to bring from the page to the site
If you have outgrown the page, the page is also where the first draft of the site is hiding. Before we talk, gather these.
- The questions people message you. Each one that repeats is a line the site should answer without being asked.
- The three or four posts that got a real response. Those are the photos and the sentences that already work.
- The services people actually phone about, in their words rather than yours. That is your page list; the guide to what pages a small business website needs explains why it stops at four.
- The towns you really drive to, by name.
- Your hours, your phone number, and the price you keep typing into Messenger.
A site built from that list is built from your customers' questions, and those beat mine.
Common questions
- Can a Facebook page show up in Google at all?
- It can. When you create a Page, Meta's help page has you "Select Public Page," and Google crawls the public pages it can reach. What that gets you is one result, for your business name, on facebook.com. It does not get you a result for "water heater Fort Erie," because no page of yours says that on its own.
- Do I need a website if I have a Google Business Profile?
- The two do different jobs. Google says a Business Profile lets you "manage how your business shows up on Maps and Search at no charge." It also says you can "direct customers to your website, social media, booking links, and more." It covers your hours, number and map pin well. It does not give you a page per service or per town; that is what the site is for. When I build one, setting the listing up to point at it is part of the job.
- Will a website cost me a monthly fee like ads do?
- Not from me. The three sizes are one-time prices in Canadian dollars, from $1,800 for Starter, and the only recurring costs are the yearly domain and hosting renewals, which go in writing before you pay anything. The cost guide lists what is in each size.
- How do I test this for my own business without spending anything?
- Ask your next ten new customers how they found you and write the answers on the back of an invoice. Three or more searched: you have outgrown the page. All ten say a friend, the sign or Facebook: another year on the page costs you very little. Ten customers and three answers is my own rule of thumb, not a published figure.
Checked against Meta and Google help pages on 2026-09-21: Meta, How Facebook ranks content in Feed, Meta, Create a Facebook Page, Meta, Facebook Pages Terms, Google, How Search works, Google, Get started with Business Profile. The café, the plumber and the landscaper are illustrations, not clients.
Tell me what you sell and how your last few customers found you, and I'll say plainly whether a site would earn its money yet. If the answer is "not yet," you'll hear that instead of a quote. If it is yes, Starter at $1,800 is the size the plumber and the landscaper above would need, and the price is fixed before I start. Call 905.682.4642 or email hello@niagarawebdesigner.com.
