Do you need a website if your business is on social media?

Your business has an active social profile. People comment, send messages, and find recent work there. A website would take time to build and keep current. Is it actually needed?

Start with the questions a prospective customer must answer before contacting you. If your social profile gives them a clear, current answer and an easy next step, a website may not be your most urgent project. If important details are buried in posts, hard to share, or scattered across accounts, a small website can give those details a stable home. Social media can still do the work it does well: showing activity, starting conversations, and pointing people to fuller information.

Canadian businesses commonly use both channels, but adoption is not proof that either one will work for yours. In Statistics Canada’s table on types of web presence, 77.9% of Canadian enterprises with at least five employees reported a company website in 2023, while 63.1% reported a social media account. The survey let businesses select more than one type of presence, so these groups overlap. The figures exclude enterprises with one to four employees and do not measure customer preference, leads, sales, or the value of adding a website.

Web presence reported in 2023	Share of Canadian enterprises with at least five employees
Company website	77.9%
Social media account	63.1%

Source: Statistics Canada, Table 22-10-0120-01. Businesses could select both categories. This is a comparison of reported use, not a test of which channel performs better.

Ask what a new customer needs to find

Try to see your presence as someone who has never heard of your business. Can they tell what you offer, whom you serve, where you work, and how to take the next step? Can they find that information without creating an account or scrolling through months of posts? Can they share a direct link to a particular service with a colleague?

For a bookkeeper, a recent social post might show a helpful tax-season reminder. It may not tell a prospective client whether the practice offers monthly bookkeeping, serves their type of business, works across Ottawa and Gatineau, or is accepting inquiries. Those are durable service questions. A website can answer them in a place designed for that task, while the social account continues to share timely updates.

Make a short list of the questions customers repeatedly ask by message or phone. Look at whether your current profile answers each one plainly. If it does, and inquiries arrive through a process your team can manage, you may choose to improve the profile and response routine first. If the same explanation has to be typed repeatedly or posts send people to several different places, a focused page could save work for both sides.

Give each channel a job

A social profile is useful for showing current work, sharing short updates, answering public questions, and joining a community already there. It may also be the fastest way to test whether an offer deserves more explanation. The tradeoff is that a profile follows the platform’s layout and account rules. You can edit the information you post, but you cannot design every part of the visitor’s path or assume the platform will always display it in the same way. CIRA’s guide to bringing a business online makes this control distinction. CIRA manages the .CA registry, so its advice about .CA registrations reflects that role.

A website lets you organize the lasting answers around customer decisions. A visitor could go straight to a service page, read who the service suits, see the service area and language options, then choose a contact route. You can link to that page from a social bio, a message, a proposal, or an email signature. Your domain registration, hosting, content, and accounts still need active maintenance; a website is not an asset that runs itself.

Neither channel guarantees that people will find you. Google’s SEO Starter Guide explains how clear page titles, useful content, and links can help search engines understand a site, while explicitly saying there is no guarantee a page will appear in search results. A social account may be visible in search too. The decision is about what each channel helps your customer do, not a promise that a website will outrank a profile.

Decide whether a small site is enough

You do not need to begin with a large site or a blog. For a service business with a straightforward offer, a compact site might include:

• A plain description of the services and the people they are for.
• An honest service area, location or remote-work policy, and business identity.
• A clear way to contact the team and an explanation of what happens after an inquiry.
• Links to active social profiles where current work or updates add context.

If services have different audiences or decision points, give them separate, useful pages rather than squeezing everything into an introductory paragraph. An accounting practice, for example, may need to distinguish bookkeeping from tax work so visitors can understand which inquiry path fits. If a service is not currently offered, leave it out. A page that accurately answers a customer’s question is more valuable than a longer list of vague capabilities.

For an Ottawa–Gatineau business, language is a planning decision, not a button to add at the end. If customers need an English and French route, consider the full path: service explanation, contact labels, confirmation, and reply. Publish accurate material your team can review and maintain in each language. A partial translation that sends the visitor into an unrelated or unreadable next step does not complete the task. Our guide to planning a bilingual website covers that journey in more detail.

Compare the real work, not just the launch

Before commissioning a site, name who will handle the practical responsibilities. Someone must register and renew the domain, keep the registrar and hosting accounts accessible to the business, provide approved service information, test the contact path, and update details when hours, staff, or services change. If you use social channels alongside the site, someone still needs to reply there and keep the profile accurate.

The first version can be intentionally modest. Suppose your team can explain one service clearly and respond to inquiries by email, but cannot yet maintain a news section. Build the service and contact path; leave the news section out. If visitors need to compare several services, choose a structure that lets them do that. If you need customer logins, a tailored workflow, or a connection to another system, that is a different scoping question from a basic information site.

Judge the work against a baseline you can observe. Write down the questions people ask before you change anything. After launch, check whether visitors can find the answers and whether incoming inquiries contain enough context for a useful reply. Ask callers or correspondents how they found you when it is natural to do so. A change in inquiries can reflect seasonality, referrals, or other marketing, so do not treat it as proof that the website alone caused the difference. Platform view counts and website visits also measure different things; do not add them together as if they were unique potential customers.

When to wait, and when to ask for help

You can wait on a website if the offer is still changing, the current social profile answers the essential questions, and you have no capacity to keep another channel accurate. Reserve a sensible domain if it fits your plans, but do not buy a complex build merely because other businesses have one. If you register a .CA name, CIRA explains the registrar process and eligibility; registration is renewable, so keep the business’s account and renewal details current.

Consider a website when customers need information that a profile presents poorly: distinct services, a dependable link to send, accessible contact choices, or complete English and French journeys. Professional help can be worthwhile when the content, design, search setup, accessibility, and integrations need to work together, or when nobody on the team can own the build and handover. Agree on the scope and who maintains it before work starts.

The useful answer is often to keep both channels, each with a clear purpose. Let social posts bring people into the conversation. Give the lasting answers a place where a visitor can find and use them. If your service business is ready to plan that place, see Red Comet’s website services and describe the questions your customers need answered.

Sources

• Statistics Canada, Types of web presence by industry and size of enterprise, Table 22-10-0120-01.
• Statistics Canada, Survey of Digital Technology and Internet Use, 2023: questionnaire and release methodology.
• Google Search Central, SEO Starter Guide.
• CIRA, The definitive guide to bringing your business online.