I build websites for a living, so you would expect me to say yes. I am going to try not to, because the dishonest version of this answer is easy to spot and it is the reason most people ignore articles like this one.
Here is the useful way to think about it. A website is not a status symbol and it is not a marketing checkbox. It does a small number of specific jobs. If your business does not need those jobs done, you do not need one yet. So let us go through what social media genuinely does well first, because that part is real.
When Instagram alone is genuinely enough
There are Singapore businesses running perfectly well on social media alone, and they usually share a few traits:
- ✓The product is visual and the decision is quick. Bakes, nails, flowers, cakes, prints. Someone sees it, wants it, messages you. There is no research phase for a website to serve.
- ✓You are already at capacity. If you turn work away most weeks, more visibility is not your problem. Be careful here though — being full at today's prices is different from being full at the prices you want.
- ✓Your customers are the platform's customers. If people genuinely discover you by scrolling rather than by searching, you are fishing where the fish are.
- ✓You sell to people, not to companies. A B2B buyer will look you up before replying. A person buying a S$40 cake mostly will not.
If that is you, spend your money on better photos and more consistent posting before you spend it on a website. That is the honest advice and it costs me work to give it.
The four things social media cannot do for you
Now the other side. These are not opinions about which platform is nicer — they are structural. No amount of good posting fixes them.
1. It cannot be found by someone searching
Think about how you look for a plumber, a physiotherapist, or someone to service your aircon. You almost certainly do not open Instagram and search. You type "aircon servicing bukit timah" into Google or ask your phone, and you pick from what comes back.
That moment — someone actively looking for exactly what you sell, right now, ready to pay — is the single highest-value moment in your entire marketing. Social media does not participate in it. Search engines index web pages; a post inside an app is largely invisible to them.
This is the difference between demand capture and demand creation. Social media creates demand: it shows your work to people who were not looking for it. Search captures demand: it puts you in front of people who already decided they want it. Capture is worth more per person, and it is the half you are currently sitting out.
2. It cannot be there when the algorithm is not
You do not own your followers. You rent access to them, and the rent changes without notice. Reach drops, formats fall out of favour, the platform decides to push a new feature, and the audience you spent three years building stops seeing you. Nothing you did wrong; nothing you can appeal.
A website is the one piece of your presence nobody can adjust. It shows up the same on Monday as it did on Friday.
3. It cannot survive losing the account
This is the one that actually ends businesses, and almost nobody plans for it. Accounts get hacked. Accounts get disabled by automated systems for reasons that are wrong, and the appeal process is a form and a wait. If your entire business lives in one account — your catalogue, your customer messages, your reviews, your only way of being contacted — then losing it is not an inconvenience. It is the business.
A domain you own and a site you control is the thing that survives that. If you take nothing else from this article, take this: have somewhere that is yours.
4. It cannot be quoted by an AI answer
More people now ask ChatGPT, Gemini or Google's AI summary instead of scrolling results — "who does braces in Singapore and roughly what does it cost". Those tools answer in a paragraph and cite a few sources. They read web pages. They do not read your Instagram grid.
So a whole new category of "someone asked about exactly what you sell" is happening, every day, with you not in the running. This is early, and it is exactly the kind of shift that looks optional for two years and then obvious in hindsight.
The trust problem nobody mentions
There is a fifth thing, and it is softer but I think it matters most for anyone selling something expensive.
When someone is about to spend real money — a renovation, a medical procedure, a service contract, anything with a number that makes them pause — they do a quiet check. They look you up. What they are looking for is not beautiful design. They are looking for evidence that you are a real, findable, accountable business: a proper address, a phone number, clear pricing or at least clear scope, real names.
An Instagram profile can be genuinely excellent and still fail that check, because it looks the same as every other profile. There is no way for a stranger to tell the difference between a nine-year-old business and something set up last Tuesday. A website is where you get to answer the question they are too polite to ask, which is: are you going to still be here if this goes wrong?
So how big does it need to be?
Much smaller than people assume. Almost every business that "needs a website" actually needs one page and one free listing:
- ✓A single page on a domain you own, saying who you are, what you do, where you are, what it roughly costs, and how to reach you. That is it. No blog, no gallery of stock photos, no "Our Vision".
- ✓A Google Business Profile, filled in properly. This is free, it is what puts you in the map results, and it is the fastest-acting thing on this entire list. Most businesses either never claimed theirs or filled it in once in 2019.
Keep posting on Instagram. It is doing a job the website cannot do — showing your work to people who were not looking for it. The two are not competitors. The website is the place all that attention has somewhere to land.
Three questions that settle it
If you want a decision rather than a discussion, answer these honestly:
- 1Would somebody type what you sell into Google? If yes, you are currently invisible for the highest-intent search there is.
- 2Does anyone spend more than a few hundred dollars with you? If yes, they are checking you out first, and right now there is not much to find.
- 3If your account vanished tomorrow, could customers still reach you? If no, that is not a marketing question. That is a risk you are carrying.
Three noes and you genuinely do not need a website yet. Come back when one of them changes. One yes and you need a page — and a page is not a big project.
Common questions
Your profile page itself can appear if someone searches your exact business name, but individual posts are largely not surfaced for the searches that matter — the ones where somebody is looking for the service rather than for you. That is the gap: you can be findable by name and still be invisible to everyone who does not already know it.
It solves the link-in-bio problem, not the findability problem. Those pages are usually not built to be searched for, and you are still renting rather than owning. As a stopgap they are fine. As your only home on the internet they carry the same risk as the social account does.
No, and this is the most common misunderstanding. A small business website is not a feed and does not need feeding. Your hours, services, prices and contact details change a few times a year at most. Set it up properly once and it works quietly. The updating burden is a thing you are used to from social media, not a thing websites require.
Your own domain name is the non-negotiable part, and it costs a few tens of dollars a year. Beyond that, a genuinely simple one-page site is a modest one-off. If a quote is far above that for something simple, ask what specifically the extra buys — it is a fair question and a good supplier will have a straight answer.
Definitely not. They do different jobs. Social media reaches people who were not looking for you; the website catches people who are, and gives everyone else somewhere solid to land. The businesses that do best run both and point each at the other.
Sources
- Google Search Central — In-depth guide to how Google Search works
- Google Business Profile Help — Guidelines for representing your business on Google
- Google Search Central — Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content
I build websites and run SEO & AEO for Singapore businesses. HeyAda is my Singapore web studio — design, copywriting, code and SEO, handled end to end. I write these guides to share what actually works, in plain English. If your site isn't getting found, say hi.
Decided you need a page?
If it is the one-page-and-a-Google-listing version you need, that is a small job and I would rather build you the right small thing than the wrong big one. Tell me what your business does and I will tell you honestly what it needs.