Do I need a website if I have Instagram?

If your Instagram is busy and bookings come in through your messages, it’s fair to ask whether a website is worth it. For a lot of local businesses, Instagram is where people first see their work.

My honest answer: Instagram and a website do different jobs. Most businesses do best with both, linked to each other.

What Instagram does well

Instagram is good at showing your work. A hairdresser’s colour work, a tattoo artist’s portfolio, a cake maker’s latest order: the pictures do the selling, and Instagram is built for pictures.

It’s also good for keeping in touch with people who already follow you. A new post or story reminds them you’re there, and they can message you straight away.

And it costs nothing to start, which matters when you’re just getting going.

What you don’t control

Your account is yours to use, but it lives on someone else’s platform, under their rules.

• The account and your followers are on Instagram, not on anything of yours. Instagram can change its rules or how the app works, and you have no say in it. If you ever lose access to the account, your followers don’t come with you.
• The platform decides who sees your posts. Not everyone who follows you sees everything you post. Instagram chooses what to show each person, and the way it chooses can change.
• Posts move down over time. Your prices, opening hours or an important update can be buried a few weeks later under newer posts.

None of that makes Instagram a bad choice. It just means it shouldn’t be the only place your business lives online.

When someone searches for you

Think about how people look for a local business. Many go to Google or Google Maps and type something like “hairdresser near me”, or the name of the business they’ve heard about.

An Instagram page won’t always show up in those results. When it does, it doesn’t answer the questions people are searching with: how much, when are you open, and where are you?

A website can be found by search engines, linked from your Google Business Profile, and answers those questions on the first screen.

I saw this with Salon 15 in Normanton. It had more than 300 five-star reviews but no website of its own, just a Facebook page and a booking profile. People searching found the booking platform rather than the salon itself, and the salon wanted its own face online: somewhere that was clearly Salon 15. The website gave it that.

What a website holds in one place

A website is the one place online that you arrange, where everything people need is easy to find:

• Your prices, in a list that’s easy to read and easy to update
• Booking, with one clear button, or a link to the system you already use
• Opening hours and where to find you, with a map
• Answers to common questions, so you get fewer of the same messages
• Your best work, chosen by you, not by when you happened to post it

It’s also yours: your address, your words and your photos, arranged how you want them, and not dependent on any one app.

The best of both

You don’t have to choose. For most local businesses the best setup is both, working together:

• Put your website address in your Instagram bio.
• Link to your Instagram from your website, so people can see your latest work.
• Keep posting. Instagram keeps people interested, and the website gives them the details and the booking button when they’re ready.
• Add the website to your Google Business Profile, so people who find you on Maps land on it.

One thing I’d avoid is embedding a live Instagram feed in your website. It can slow pages down and bring third-party cookies with it, and it looks empty when you haven’t posted for a while. A gallery of your own photos does the same job without those problems. That’s what I built for Salon 15’s stylists.