Do I need a website if I have Facebook and Google Reviews?
Facebook and Google Reviews give you a credible foundation, but without a website you're losing roughly 30-50% of the enquiries you could be getting, because most UK small business searches in 2026 still start on Google and land on whoever owns a proper web page for the query. You don't need to delete your Facebook or abandon your reviews, but you do need a site those two things can point to.
The three different jobs these channels do
The question "do I need a website" gets confused because people treat Facebook, Google Reviews, and a website as substitutes. They're not substitutes, they do three different jobs.
A Facebook page is where you post updates and talk to people who already follow you. It works as a distribution channel to an existing audience.
Google Reviews is social proof. It's what someone reads after they've already found you, to decide whether to trust you enough to ring.
A website is the place a new customer lands when they search for what you do. It's where the stranger becomes a lead.
You need all three if you want all three functions. Facebook alone does distribution, not discovery. Reviews alone do trust, not discovery. A website handles discovery, and nothing else reliably does.
What happens when you rely on Facebook alone
I've watched this play out enough times to describe the pattern cleanly. A business launches with a Facebook page, gets some initial traction from friends and word-of-mouth, builds up a few hundred followers over a year, and then growth flatlines.
The flatline happens because Facebook's reach to your own followers is now around 5-10% of them per post, sometimes less. The other 90-95% don't see what you post unless you pay to boost. So the business ends up running Facebook ads to reach people who already follow the page. That's the model Facebook is built on, and it's a pretty expensive one.
Meanwhile, the person searching "electrician in Leeds" or "plumber in Cardiff" or "personal trainer in Glasgow" isn't looking at Facebook. They're on Google, and whoever has a proper web page gets the call.
What happens when you rely on Google Reviews alone
Reviews are strong. A business with 30 five-star Google Reviews has real credibility. But reviews only help if somebody finds you in the first place.
When someone searches "best roofer near me", Google's local pack at the top of the results shows three businesses with their reviews visible. You might be in that pack, you might not. Below the pack, the organic results are ten websites. A business with no website isn't in those ten. Full stop.
That means your reviews do the job of converting people who've already landed on your Google Business profile, but they don't help you show up in the first place for service-plus-location searches. Websites do. Reviews on a website compound both jobs.
What a website adds that Facebook and Reviews can't
Four things, specifically.
Organic search traffic. A website ranks for the terms you care about: "emergency plumber in [your city]", "wedding photographer in [your area]", "[your service] near me". Neither Facebook nor a Google Business profile alone ranks for the full range of these terms. A website does.
Credibility beyond the review count. A lot of customers in 2026 still form a first impression from the website design. If the site looks dated or non-existent, the review count doesn't fully rescue the impression. A clean, modern site is a lot of the trust.
Owned space. Facebook's algorithm is theirs. Google's profile is theirs. A website is yours. Nobody can change the rules on you, and nobody can delete your audience.
Depth. A Facebook page has maybe three useful fields and a grid of posts. A website can have a service page for every service, a location page for every area you cover, a gallery, a pricing page, an FAQ, a contact form. Depth is what lets a small business actually rank for the dozen or two queries it wants to be found for.
The stack that works: all three, pointed at each other
The businesses I see doing this well use the three channels together. The website is the home base. Facebook is the update channel that drives repeat customers and local community trust. Google Reviews are the proof.
Every channel points at the others. The website has a "See our Google Reviews" link and a "Follow us on Facebook" badge. The Facebook page has the website in the bio. The Google Business profile has the website URL in the header. A visitor can enter from any point and end up on the main site, where the actual enquiry happens.
This is true for a café in Brighton just as much as an accountant in Edinburgh. The trade and the city change. The stack doesn't.
When it's genuinely fine to skip the website, for now
I want to be honest about this because "you need a website" is sometimes said to people who genuinely don't.
You can skip the website if: you're a hobbyist, not a business; you have all the work you want from word-of-mouth alone; you don't want to grow beyond the customers you already have; or your revenue is small enough that the £250 is a real stretch that should go to more immediate needs.
Outside those four, the site pays for itself quickly. For a cleaner or a dentist or a solicitor doing proper service work at proper rates, one extra booked job typically covers the whole website cost.
How the economics actually work out
Think of it this way. A £250 site needs to bring in one new enquiry that turns into one new customer to pay for itself, assuming the customer spends more than £250 with you. Most small business customers spend a lot more than that over a year. The break-even is often a single job.
After break-even, every additional enquiry the site brings in is pure margin on top of what Facebook and reviews were already doing. Nothing has to be cannibalised. The site doesn't cost you anything your other channels were earning, it adds a new channel that they weren't covering.
The slightly-more-honest version
What most small business owners who hold off on a website are really saying is "building a website sounds like a project I don't want to take on". That's a fair feeling. Fifteen years ago it was a fair diagnosis. In 2026 it's outdated.
A £250 site takes ten business days and about three hours of your time total. You answer a short brief, review a preview a week later, give one round of feedback, and the site goes live. It's less admin than a typical week of Facebook posting.
If you are still deciding whether the budget makes sense, read the website design under £500 guide. If you already have a site alongside Facebook and Google, send it for a free website check before you spend money on a rebuild.
If you're ready to add a website to the stack you've already built on Facebook and Google, tell me about your business and I'll put a fixed quote together.
FAQ
Can a small business survive in 2026 with just Facebook and Google Reviews?
Yes, some do. Especially word-of-mouth trades with a strong local network. But 'survive' and 'grow' aren't the same thing. The businesses that grow past the first year almost always have a website because search-driven enquiries compound and review-driven ones don't.
Doesn't Facebook give me a website for free?
A Facebook page is not a website. It's a rented piece of a much larger platform. You don't own the audience, you can't change the layout, you can't control what Facebook shows to visitors, and you're stuck with whatever ad algorithm the platform runs next year. A £250 website solves every one of those problems.
How much extra business does a website actually bring in?
I'd rather not invent a figure. What I can say honestly: for a local service business, the difference between 'no site' and 'a well-optimised site with local SEO' usually shows up within a few months as enquiries from searches you weren't capturing before. The size of the lift depends on how competitive your trade and city are.
Isn't setting up a website a huge project?
Not anymore. Ten business days from brief to launch for a Starter at £250. A Facebook page takes about the same amount of admin effort to keep up-to-date as a small website once it's built. The 'websites are a huge project' assumption is left over from 2015.
If I already have lots of Google Reviews, do I still need a website?
Yes, because the reviews live on Google's profile page, not yours. A website lets you pull the best reviews onto pages that also sell the service, book the call, or capture the enquiry. Reviews are a reason to trust you. A website is where that trust converts.