Last updated: 10 August 2026
It is a fair question to ask in 2026. You have a Facebook page, a Google profile shows up when people search, maybe an Instagram. Customers find you. So why spend money on your own website?
I am not going to give you the obvious sales answer that "everyone needs a website". Some businesses get by on social media alone for a long time. But there are some things you give up when you do not have a place online that is actually yours, and they are worth knowing about before you decide.
What you build on rented ground
Your Facebook page, your Google profile, your Instagram account: none of them are yours. You are borrowing space on platforms that own the rules of the game, and that can change them at any time. They decide who sees your posts, what costs money to reach people with, and what is allowed. Your reach on social media has fallen steadily for years, unless you pay.
Your own website is the one surface online that you actually own and control. It does not disappear if a platform changes its algorithm, closes your account by mistake, or loses popularity. We have written about what you should be left with when the website is delivered, and the core there is the same: ownership means nobody else can pull the rug out from under you.
People check you out, including those who found you on Facebook
Even when a customer discovers you on social media, many take the same next step: they google you to see whether you seem serious. Do you have opening hours? An address? Does it look like a real business, or a page someone set up and forgot?
A tidy website answers those questions and gives a first impression you control yourself, not one that depends on whatever happens to sit at the top of a Facebook feed. For many industries this is the difference between being perceived as a professional option or an uncertain one.
Being found by those actively looking
There is an important difference between social media and search. On Facebook you appear in the feed of people who already follow you. In Google you appear for people who are right now looking for what you sell. Those are two completely different kinds of attention, and the latter is often the most valuable, because it reaches people at the moment they have decided to find someone.
Without your own website you are in practice invisible to that search. A Facebook page rarely ranks when someone googles "plumber in Haugesund" or "accountant near me". A website built to be found does.
The point most people skip: it has to be kept alive
Here comes the part that is easy to forget. A website is not a poster you put up once. It is more like a shop window, and a window with two-year-old information, outdated prices or a "opening hours at Christmas 2024" message actually does more damage than no site at all. It signals that nobody is paying attention.
We have written a whole article about the website never being finished, and this is exactly what it is about. A living website, where the content is accurate, where news appears now and then, and where the technical side is kept up, works for you. A dead website works against you.
That is also how search engines see it. A site that is updated signals to Google that the business is active. A site that sits untouched for years gradually loses ground to competitors who keep theirs alive. Keeping the site updated is not only for the customers' sake, it is also what keeps you visible.
So, do you need one?
Honest answer: it depends. If you run a small business where all contact goes through people you know, you can get by without one for a long time. But if you want to be found by new customers, come across as serious when someone checks you out, and stand on your own ground instead of renting space from platforms that change the rules, then your own website gives you something social media cannot.
And if you are going to have one, have one that lives. A simple, tidy, updated site beats a big abandoned one, every time. It need be neither expensive nor complicated, it just needs to be yours, and to be looked after.
If you are unsure what suits your particular business, we are happy to have a no-obligation talk. Sometimes the answer is a simple website, sometimes it is something else, and occasionally the answer is that you will manage fine without one for a while yet. If so, we will say that.