Does a Clanfield Business Need a Website, or Are Facebook and Google Enough?
In a village the size of Clanfield, a lot of trade still comes from being known. Here is how to tell whether that is enough for your business, when a website starts to earn its keep, and what to sort out first either way.
A Clanfield business does not always need a website. If recommendations, a Google Business Profile and a Facebook page keep you as busy as you want, that can be enough. A website starts to pay when you want enquiries from people who do not already know you, across several services and nearby places such as Horndean and Petersfield. Either way, complete your free Google profile and get a free listing on Clanfield.co first.
See the £500 website build ↓It depends who is looking for you
Clanfield's shops, cafés, salons and takeaways sit on the Drift Road, South Lane and Green Lane parades and on White Dirt Lane. People walk and drive past them. A business like that, serving people who already know where it is, can do well on a Google listing and a Facebook page.
A business with no shop front is in a different position. If you work from a van or a home office, and you want customers in Horndean, Catherington or Petersfield as well as the village, the people you need have never passed your door. They search for a service in a place, and a Facebook page rarely appears for that.
So the honest answer is that some businesses need a website and some do not.
You can leave it for now if
You are fully booked. You work for one or two regular customers. You are about to change what the business does. In any of those cases, keep your Google profile in good order and look again later.
It is time if
You want more enquiries than word of mouth brings. You cover several towns and villages and are known in one. You offer several services and people know you for one. You are paying for leads and want to stop. Customers ask where they can see your work.
What a Google profile and a Facebook page do well
A Google Business Profile puts you on Google Maps with your hours, phone number and reviews. It is free, and it is the first thing to get right for near-me searches. If you do only one thing, do this, and ask your customers for reviews.
A Facebook page works for people who already know you. It is good for showing recent jobs, taking messages and staying in mind.
Where they stop
Neither gives you a page for each thing you do. Someone searching for a particular service in Horndean or Petersfield is shown pages about that service in that place. A profile and a social page cannot be that page for every service and every place you cover.
They are not yours to control either. A page can be restricted or lose reach, and the layout and rules change without anyone asking you.
They also give AI assistants less to go on. Tools such as ChatGPT build local answers from web pages that state plainly what a business does and where, alongside review ratings. A business with reviews and a clear website gives them more to work with than one with a social page alone. Our guide to getting recommended by ChatGPT explains this.
Free things to do this week
Claim and complete your Google Business Profile. Then look for your business in the Clanfield.co directory. If it is there, claim the listing and check the details. If it is not, add it, which is free. Both give search engines and AI assistants accurate details about you at no cost.
If the answer is yes
Read how websites are priced before you ask anyone for a quote, and our guide to websites for tradespeople if you run a trade. For quotes, our sister site ranks web designers in the nearby Waterlooville area on their Google reviews, and our publisher offers a £500 one-off build.
About this guide
Clanfield.co is published by Dean Keating, whose business builds websites, so we have an interest in the answer being yes, and the advert below is for his own service. We have tried to say plainly when the answer is no.
Share this article