Facebook page vs a website for trades

Lead sources23 August 20266 min read

Short answer: Facebook is word of mouth at scale — excellent with people who already know you exist, invisible to those searching for what you do. A website is the reverse. Firms that feel the difference are the ones whose diary depends on which half is missing.

The case for the page, stated fairly

Local trade groups are real marketplaces. “Any scaffolders free this week?” posted in a town group gets answered within minutes, and the firm with a tidy page full of job photographs wins it. Recommendations accumulate as reviews. Setting up costs nothing, posting costs minutes, and for a new firm the page is often the first proof of life online. If the choice today is a Facebook page or nothing, choose the page — and then read the rest of this.

The three structural problems

• Discovery. Someone new to the area with a leaking roof does not scroll a community group; they search. Service searches return websites and map listings. A Facebook page can surface for its own name occasionally, but rarely for “electrician Tunbridge Wells” — which means an entire category of customer never learns the firm exists.
• Control. Reach on Facebook is decided by Meta’s ranking, not by the firm. Post frequency, format, group rules, account decisions — every one of them can change without notice, and the whole presence sits inside an account that Meta can restrict. Nothing about the firm’s visibility is owned.
• Credibility at the checking moment. When someone recommends a firm, the recommendee checks before ringing. A page last updated months ago, with mixed personal posts and no prices, no insurance details and no proper photographs, loses jobs silently — the caller never rings, so nobody ever knows.

What each one is actually for

The pattern worth noticing

The strongest local firms run both, and the division of labour is clean: the page keeps them present in the community’s feed; the site converts everyone the feed sends. A recommendation in a group ends with the same move almost every time — “I’ll look them up”. What that lookup returns decides the job. The page starts races; the website finishes them.

Choose each when

• Page alone suits: the earliest days of a firm, cash-tight months, trades where group recommendations dominate locally.
• Add a website when: people who have been recommended you look you up and find nothing there to reassure them, when competitors’ names appear in searches yours does not, or when the diary needs to be fed by strangers rather than acquaintances.

Next

The other free presence, and where it stops, is covered in Google Business Profile vs a website — the profile belongs in every trade firm’s setup alongside whichever of these two wins. For what the owned channel costs to stand up, the price bands are here, and the general principles sit in the main guide.

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