Social media · 6 min read
Is Instagram enough for a local business, or do you still need a website?
Instagram alone is enough to start, but not enough to grow. A profile is excellent at showing your work and terrible at being found on Google, being trusted for larger purchases, and turning an enquiry into a booking. Most local businesses do best with an active profile plus a small website that captures the enquiry.
By Raja Wahab, Co-founder, Fixby Studios · Updated
What Instagram genuinely does well
- Proof. Real photos and videos of finished jobs are more persuasive than any brochure.
- Reach. A single reel can put a barber or a cake maker in front of thousands of local people.
- Speed. You can post from a job in thirty seconds.
- Conversation. DMs are how a lot of younger customers prefer to enquire.
What it can't do
You won't be found in search
When someone in Huddersfield needs a service urgently, they usually type it into Google rather than searching Instagram. If nothing of yours exists on the web outside a social profile, you're not in that moment at all.
You don't own it
An account can be restricted, hacked or lost, and reach changes whenever the platform decides it should. A website is an asset you control; a profile is rented space.
It's a poor place to close
Prices, service areas, availability, terms, deposits — none of it fits in a bio. Enquiries end up scattered across DMs, and the ones that come in during a busy week get missed.
Bigger purchases need reassurance
For a £30 order, a profile is fine. For a £3,000 job, people want to see detail, process, and evidence you're a real business before they message you.
So what's the right setup?
For most local businesses: keep the social profile as the shop window, and add a small website as the counter. That means a handful of pages — what you do, who for, the areas you cover, examples of work, and an obvious way to enquire — with your profile linked from it and it linked from your profile.
- Post to social as you already do, from real jobs.
- Put your site link in the bio and point people to it when a DM gets detailed.
- Let the site take the enquiry, so it lands in one place with the details you need.
- Follow up from there rather than in an inbox you share with everything else.
Common questions
Can I get by with just a Google Business Profile?
It's a strong start for local visibility and worth setting up properly. It still sends people somewhere — and where it sends them decides whether they enquire.
How small can the website be?
Genuinely small. A few well-written pages that load fast beat a large site nobody maintains.
We can run the social side and build the site that catches the enquiries.
Sources
Raja Wahab is co-founder of Fixby Studios, a Huddersfield studio building websites, SEO, social media and business software for small, owner-managed businesses across West Yorkshire.
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Fixby Studios builds websites, runs SEO and manages social media for small businesses across Huddersfield and West Yorkshire.