Do I Need a Website If I Have Instagram?
Almost certainly yes. Social media is one channel out of hundreds, and it is one you do not own. Instagram and Facebook are good at showing people what you do once they already know you exist. A website is what gets found by somebody who does not know you exist yet, and for most local businesses that is where the new money comes from.
Let me date myself a little with this one, because the story is more relevant than it sounds.
Three channels and a pair of rabbit ears
When I was young we did not have cable TV. We had an antenna. We had three channels. Well, two reliably, with rabbit ears we had to move around the room, and if we were lucky we could pull in that third one.
And we thought it was the greatest thing ever. Three channels.
Then the cable showed up. Suddenly there were hundreds of channels, and everybody realized all the things they had been missing that whole time and never even known were out there.
How is the internet any different?
It is the same thing in reverse. Right now there are hundreds and hundreds of places where people are looking for things. And you are sitting there with rabbit ears on an old TV, watching one channel.
Instagram.
Three channels, if the rabbit ears cooperate.
- Google Search
- Google Maps
- ChatGPT
- Yelp
- Apple Maps
- YouTube
- Nextdoor
- Bing
- TikTok
- Gemini
- InstagramYou are here
- Review sites
- Local directories
- + hundreds more
Think about where a new customer actually goes. They type into Google. They open a map and search from where they are standing. They ask ChatGPT for a recommendation, read reviews, ask the neighborhood app. Most of those places build their answers out of websites and business listings. A search engine reads the words on a page to work out what that page is about, and a photo with a two line caption gives it very little to read.
This is not an attack on Instagram
Instagram is great at what it is great at. It is a marketplace. We are not saying it is not a marketplace. But is it the first marketplace somebody goes to? That really depends on what you are selling. And there are plenty of businesses where Instagram is simply not going to do it. It might be fine for brand recognition.
Every one of these platforms has its own attraction. Certain things each one does well, certain people drawn to that, and that is who congregates there.
So you need to know who actually buys from you. Where is your demographic?
Here is a quick way to find out. Ask your last ten new customers how they found you. Not your regulars, who already follow you. The new ones. If most of them say Instagram, your buyers live there and the account is earning its keep. If they say "I searched," "I found you on the map" or "a friend sent me your website," then the channel bringing in new money is one you are barely standing in.
Take a spa
Say you run a nail salon, a hair salon, some kind of spa. Instagram is a great place for that. Look at the set I just finished. Look at this color. Here is a special this week. That is exactly what the platform is built for, and you should be doing it.
But now picture somebody else. They are on Google. They just want to get their nails done in Oxnard this Saturday.
Do they go to Instagram?
You already know the answer, because it is what you do when you need a dentist in a town you just moved to.
Already follows you. Likes the set you posted. Might book one day. Somebody who already knows your name.
"Nails in Oxnard this Saturday." Has never heard of you. Compares three places, reads the reviews, books one today.
And they are not browsing, they are deciding. Somebody searching like that has already made up their mind to spend the money. The only question left is where, and Google answers it with a map, a short list of businesses and the websites behind them. It works the same way in Oxnard, in Ventura and in every other town across Ventura County: the search that fills an empty Saturday is a search, not a scroll.
The part nobody mentions: you do not own it
Your Instagram following is rented. The platform decides who sees your posts, changes the rules whenever it likes, and can suspend an account by mistake and leave you with a support form.
Your website is yours. Your Google Business Profile is yours. Your customer list is yours.
Your followers and your posts. The platform decides who sees each one, the rules change without asking you, and you cannot take your followers with you if you ever leave.
Your website, your Google Business Profile and your customer list. You decide what they say, the pages stay up, and they keep getting found whether you posted this week or not.
There is a second catch, and we have written about it before. Posting to social media first can work against your search visibility, because the platform gets the credit for content that should have lived on your own site first.
So what should you actually do?
Not one or the other. Both, in the right order.
- Claim your Google Business Profile. Free, and often the highest-return hour you will spend this quarter. It is the listing that puts you on the map when somebody searches nearby, and getting that listing into the map results is a job of its own.
- Get a real website, even a small one. What you do, where you do it, how pricing works, how to book. A small business website does not need fifty pages. It needs to answer the questions people ask before they pick up the phone. A builder like Wix or Squarespace can carry that, and whether those builders hold you back on Google mostly comes down to what you put on them.
- Make a page per service and per city. One page cannot be the best answer for six services in four towns. A page about gel manicures in Oxnard can be the best answer for gel manicures in Oxnard.
- Then keep using Instagram. Because now it has somewhere to send people.
Social is the shop window. The website is the shop.
A lot of businesses have a beautiful window standing in an empty lot.
A beautiful window standing in an empty lot. People stop and look, and there is nowhere to walk in.
The same window with a shop behind it. Somebody who likes what they see can walk in and buy.
We have watched the right order pay off. A pool company serving Thousand Oaks was one guy with a truck and forty pools, found almost only by people who already knew its name. Once it showed up for the searches its customers actually use, it grew to more than two hundred pools.
Not sure which one you are?
Fair question, and it deserves a real answer rather than a pitch. We will look up what people in your area are actually searching for and tell you honestly whether a website will pay for itself. If the answer is stay on social for now and revisit in six months, that is what you will hear.
1300 Eastman Ave, Ventura. Tell us what you sell and where, and we will show you what people nearby are searching for, and whether a website would pay for itself.