At the moment I’m still in Suriname visiting my mom who’s a bit lonely since our father died. While searching on the internet for local products and services, I discovered that many companies in Suriname use a Facebook page instead of a website. That made me curious to the difference since we are also preparing to use Facebook for our business.
In the previous post ‘6 Reasons why especially startups should have a website’ I wrote about the importance of having a website.
Now I’m looking into the difference between a website and a Facebook page.
After some research I came to the next conclusions:
| Website | Facebook page | |
| Costs | Free to expensive depending on what you want your site to look like and whether you build it yourself or let someone else do it for you.
For a free diy version go to our course ‘7 Quick steps to your own website’. |
Free |
| Knowledge | It is necessary, but easy to learn through our free course (see above). | None |
| Control | You’re totally in control. You decide what your customized website looks like (content and design). | You have a lack of control because you have to follow the terms of service from Facebook. |
| Market | You have to create your own new market. | You have an existing market (family, friends and their network). |
| Marketing | You have all the space on your website to market your products or services. | The space for marketing on your Facebook page is limited. |
| Information delivery | Through feeding. A visitor needs to subscribe first in order to receive regular updates. | Through the timeline. Your network receives the updates at once. |
| Statistics | You decide whether you want the number of your website visitors to be known. | The number of visitors (fans) is known. |
| Interaction | Dealing with visitors who are causing trouble can be time consuming. | Visitors who are causing trouble can be blocked easily. |
Looking at this summary I think that the best way to expose and market your online business is to have both a website and a Facebook page. By doing this you have the best of both worlds, because a website gives you complete control over your exposure while Facebook is an excellent marketing tool.