Why a new business needs a website, even if you get all your work from Facebook

A man who runs a tiling business messaged me last year. He said: "I get all my jobs from a Facebook group. Why do I need a website?" It is a fair question, and I did not try to talk him out of it. I asked him one thing back — what happens when someone in that group recommends you, and the customer wants to check you out before calling?

That is the gap. Facebook brings you the recommendation. It does not close it. Somebody hears your name, types it into Google, and whatever they find in the next ten seconds decides whether they call you or the next guy.

1. You stop losing the customers you already earned

Most new owners think a website is for finding new customers. In year one it is mostly the opposite. It is for catching the people who already heard about you.

Think about how it actually goes. A customer is happy, tells a friend. The friend searches your business name. If nothing comes up, or the top result is somebody else with a similar name, that lead is gone and you will never know it existed. You did the hard part — the work, the reputation — and lost the easy part.

A five-page site fixes that for about the cost of one week of ads.

2. You own it, and nobody can take it away

This is the one I would underline if I could only say one thing.

Your Facebook page is not yours. Your Instagram is not yours. They are borrowed. The account can get locked, the reach can drop overnight because somebody changed something, or the group you rely on can go quiet. I have watched a client lose an Instagram account with 4,000 followers and no way to get it back. Everything he had built lived on somebody else's platform.

A website is the one place online that belongs to you. Your domain, your pages, your customer list. Everything else should point at it.

3. It makes you look established when you are not yet

Nobody needs to know you opened six weeks ago. A proper site, a business email instead of a Gmail address, real photos of your work — a customer reads that as "this person is serious" without thinking about it.

This matters more for some businesses than others. If you are asking for a deposit, working inside somebody's house, or handling their money, they are quietly checking whether you are real before they hand anything over. A website is where that check happens.

It matters even more if your name is hard for the customer to spell or pronounce. Unfair, but true. A clean website removes the doubt before it forms.

4. Google Maps works better when you have a website

Most new owners do the sensible thing and set up a Google Business profile so they show up on Maps. Good. But there is a website field in that profile, and leaving it empty holds you back.

Google is deciding whether to show you or a competitor when somebody nearby searches "tiler near me". A profile linked to a real website with matching details — same name, same phone, same address — gives Google more reason to trust you. A profile with no website is a thinner listing.

If you do only two things this month, do these: fill in your Google Business profile properly, and give it a website to point at.

5. It answers questions while you are working

You are on a roof, under a sink, or driving. You cannot answer the phone. The customer who called does not wait — they call the next number.

A website answers the boring questions for you all day: what you do, which areas you cover, your hours, roughly what things cost, how to reach you. By the time somebody messages, they already know the basics. Fewer time-wasting calls, more people ready to book.

Put a WhatsApp button on every page. Most people would rather send a message than make a call, especially in the evening, and a message waits patiently until you can pick it up.

6. Your reviews finally have somewhere to live

You will collect good reviews. On a website you can put the best three where every visitor sees them, next to a photo of the actual job.

Buried in a Facebook post from four months ago, that same review does nothing. Same words, completely different effect, only because of where it sits.

What you honestly need in year one

Not much. Do not let anybody sell you a big project before you have customers. Five pages is plenty:

• A home page that says what you do and where, in the first line
• A services page with rough prices, or at least a starting price
• Photos of real work you have done, even if it is only four jobs
• An about page with your face and your name on it
• Contact details, with WhatsApp and a phone number that works

That is it. No blog you will never write, no booking system nobody uses, no chat widget you will not answer. Start small, add later when you know what customers actually ask for.

Two mistakes I see constantly

Waiting until the business is "ready". The site helps you get to ready. Every month you wait is a month of recommendations quietly going nowhere.

Building it yourself to save money, then abandoning it half-finished. A half-built site is worse than no site — it tells the customer you gave up. If you genuinely enjoy that kind of thing, go ahead. If you would rather be doing your actual job, pay someone once and be done.

So what does it cost?

I charge ₹20,000 for a five-page business website and it is live in three days. Hosting and the domain are separate, billed by whoever you choose, and usually a few dollars a month.

You will be quoted CAD $3,000 by agencies in Canada. They are not necessarily cheating you — they have an office, a project manager and a salesperson to pay for. None of that ends up on your website. I have none of it, so it is not in your invoice.

Whatever you decide, and whoever you use, get something up. The tiling business owner has a website now. He still gets most of his work from that Facebook group. The difference is that the people who look him up afterwards find him.