What a Facebook page does well
Let’s be fair to it. A Facebook page is free, quick to set up, good for posting photos of finished jobs, useful for community groups and local recommendations, and handy for messaging. 58% of New Zealanders use Facebook daily, so your customers are certainly there. For a brand-new business with no budget, it’s a fine week-one move.
What it can’t do
- Show up on Google. When someone searches “electrician Nelson”, Google shows websites and Business Profiles, not Facebook pages. Most of your future customers will never see you.
- Reach your own followers. Facebook shows a post to a small fraction of the people who follow you unless you pay. Your noticeboard has a curtain over it.
- Answer questions in order. A website puts your services, prices, areas and contact details where people expect them. A page is a reverse-chronological feed of whatever you posted last.
- Look like a real business to everyone. 74% of NZ consumers say a business’s website is the most important tool for engaging with it (InternetNZ, 2025). To a large share of customers, no website reads as not quite a business.
- Be yours. Facebook changes its rules, its reach and occasionally locks accounts. Businesses have lost years of posts overnight. A website is an asset you own.
- Get recommended by AI. When people ask ChatGPT or Google’s AI who to call, it reads websites, reviews and directories. Facebook pages barely register.
The cost of not having one
47% of New Zealand businesses have no website, and only a quarter of sole traders do (InternetNZ .nz consumers & businesses research, 2025). That’s not a sign it’s optional; it’s a sign that the half who do have a website are collecting the customers the other half never see. When a potential customer searches, finds a competitor with a proper site, and calls them, you don’t get a notification. The cost of not having a website is invisible, which is why it’s so easy to keep not having one.
The minimum useful website
You do not need forty pages. You need:
- A homepage that says what you do, where, and how to contact you, in the first screen, on a phone.
- A page for each main service, in plain words.
- Your areas covered, your hours, your phone number on every page.
- Photos of real work.
- A contact form and click-to-call.
- A Google Business Profile that links to it.
That’s a standard business website from us, a DIY builder if you have the time and the eye, or somewhere in between. Here’s what things cost in NZ.
How to use both
The website is the front door: it’s where search, maps, ads and AI send people, and where they decide. Facebook (and Instagram) is the noticeboard and the megaphone: post the finished jobs, run targeted ads when you want to reach a suburb, chat with the community. Every post should point back to the site, and the site should link to the page. One owns, the other rents.