Do I need a website if I have Instagram?

Plenty of good businesses in Melbourne run on an Instagram account and a phone number, and some of them are doing fine. So the question is fair: if the account is working, why pay for a website? The answer is that Instagram and a website do different jobs, and the one Instagram cannot do is the one that brings in strangers.

What Instagram does well

Credit where it is due. Instagram is excellent at discovery by taste: someone sees your work, your food, your space, and decides they like you before they know anything else. It is visual proof that updates itself. It builds a following that hears from you for free. Direct messages are an easy, low-pressure way for people to ask a question. And it costs nothing but time.

If your business is driven by look and feel, a florist, a bakery, a tattoo studio, a photographer, Instagram might be your best marketing channel. None of that changes below.

Where Instagram fails you

Nobody searches Instagram for a service

When someone needs a plumber, a physio, an accountant or a venue for a 40th, they open Google and type what they need and where. Google shows a map pack and a list of websites. Instagram accounts do not appear there in any useful way. The whole stream of people who do not know you yet, and are actively looking for what you sell, goes to businesses with a website and a Google Business Profile. That is the biggest cost of not having one, and it is invisible, because those people never contact you.

It is not yours

Your account exists at Meta's pleasure. Accounts get locked by mistake, hacked, or buried by a change to the algorithm, and there is no phone number to call when it happens. Every business that has lost an account with ten thousand followers says the same thing afterwards: I wish I had a website and a mailing list. A website on your own domain is the one piece of your online presence nobody can take away.

It cannot close

Instagram can make someone want you. It struggles to let them act. A booking means a DM back and forth. A menu is a screenshot in a highlight. Prices are "DM for details", which half of people will not do. A website lets someone book, quote, order or call at eleven at night without waiting for you to see a message.

It does not answer questions

Where are you? When are you open? What suburbs do you cover? How much is it? On Instagram, those answers are buried in old posts and highlights, if they exist at all. On a website they sit in the first screen, where a person in a hurry can find them. We go into the price question specifically in Should I put prices on my website?

Machines cannot read it

This one is new. More people are asking ChatGPT and Google's AI tools for recommendations, and those tools build their answers from pages they can read. Instagram is mostly images behind a login. An AI assistant deciding who to recommend for "dog groomer in Preston" has almost nothing to go on from your account, and a great deal from a competitor's website. We explain how that works in Will my business show up in ChatGPT?

What a website does that Instagram cannot

• Shows up on Google when a stranger searches for what you do in your area, and gives your Google Business Profile somewhere to send them.
• Answers the basic questions, every time, without you being awake.
• Takes the booking, the order or the enquiry on the spot.
• Looks established. People check. A business with no website reads as either new or not quite real, fairly or not.
• Belongs to you, on a domain you own, with content you control.
• Is readable by Google and by AI assistants, which is now how a lot of recommending happens.

The minimum website that does the job

It does not have to be big. One well-made page covers it:

• What you do, who it is for, and where, in the first sentence.
• A price, a starting price, or packages.
• Real photos of you, your space or your work. Your Instagram feed can live here too.
• A few reviews with names.
• Your hours, address or service area, and a phone number that is tappable on a phone.
• One obvious way to get in touch or book.

That is what our Essentials site is: up to five pages, custom designed and built mobile first, hosting and SEO foundation included, for $999 fixed. If your budget is lower than that, a tidy page on a builder like Squarespace is better than nothing, as long as your name, address and phone number match what is on Google. We cover the options honestly in How much should a small business website cost in Australia?

How to use both together

The two are better as a pair than either is alone. Put the website in your Instagram bio, so the people who like your work can act on it. Embed or link your feed on the site, so the people who found you on Google can see you are alive and busy. Point your Google Business Profile at the site. Send any ads to the site, where the booking button is, rather than to the profile. Instagram gets you seen. The website gets you chosen.

The bottom line

If you have Instagram and no website, you are visible to people who already follow you and invisible to the strangers who are searching for exactly what you do. A one-page site fixes that, gives you something you own, and makes you readable to Google and to the AI tools that are starting to do the recommending. It is a small job. Tell us about your business and we will tell you honestly what it needs.