Your Website Alongside Instagram: Why You Need Both

Last updated: July 27, 2026

Do you still need a website if you're already on Instagram?

Yes, for most local businesses you do. Instagram mostly shows your posts to people who already follow you, while a website gets found by people who are searching for your service right now. Those are largely different groups. Instagram keeps the relationship warm, your website catches the searcher who has never come across you before.

What Instagram Does Well for Your Business

For a lot of local businesses, Instagram works well. You show what you make, customers tag you in their stories, and a regular who scrolls past your post thinks of you again. A hairdresser who posts a color transformation every Thursday builds something real that way. Instagram is at its strongest with people who already know you, and that's worth protecting.

This guide is about the other group: people who don't know you exist and are looking for someone today.

Why Your Followers Don't See Every Post

Instagram has explained how the order of posts in the app comes together. Your feed is a mix of accounts you follow, recommended posts, and ads, and what lands at the top depends on predictions: how likely you are to tap something, like it, or send it on. Instagram's head, Adam Mosseri, laid out those signals in 2023 in a post explaining the ranking.

In practice, that means a post about your new opening hours reaches the slice of your followers the system expects will engage with it. Everyone else sees something different at that moment, maybe a recommended video from an account they don't even follow. How many people a post reaches changes every time, and you only have limited say over it.

Searchers Are a Different Crowd Than Followers

Someone in Haarlem-Noord pulls their front door shut on a Sunday night at 11:15pm, keys still on the hall table inside. That person doesn't follow any locksmiths and isn't about to start browsing accounts now. They type "locksmith haarlem" into Google and call the first business with a clear page and a price on it. If you only exist on Instagram, you're not in that race.

It works the same way without the urgency. Someone searching "dog groomer haarlem prices" or "yoga class schalkwijk" has a question and wants an answer today. Instagram decides what to show you based on interest; a search engine responds to the question someone is typing right now. For how to bring in those searchers without an ad budget, see customers without advertising.

What Happens When the Platform Goes Down

On March 5, 2024, hundreds of thousands of people suddenly couldn't reach Facebook or Instagram. The outage started around 4pm Dutch time and was resolved a little over an hour later, according to Meta. Outage tracker Downdetector logged more than 84,000 reports for Instagram alone at its peak. Anyone trying to confirm an appointment by DM that afternoon could only wait it out.

An outage like that is over within a day. What stays true afterward is that an account by itself means building on land you don't own: Meta sets the rules for reach and visibility, and you can only follow them. A website runs on a domain registered in your name. What's on it is up to you, today and in five years.

How a Website and Instagram Reinforce Each Other

The two send visitors to each other. Someone finds you through Google, isn't quite sure yet, and scrolls your Instagram to see recent work. The other way around, someone sees your reel, taps the link in your bio, and lands on your site's prices, service area, and a request form. On Instagram, an interested scroller just keeps scrolling; on your own page, there's a button.

There's also a newer kind of searcher: people who ask ChatGPT or another AI assistant their question directly. If you want to turn up in answers like that, you need pages an assistant can actually read and cite. For how that works, see findable in ChatGPT.

Where a Website Won't Help

A website solves part of the problem, and the rest is still on you. Posting is still manual work. The relationship with regular customers gets built on Instagram or at the counter, and a nice page won't turn a mediocre service into a good one.

Don't expect a top ranking in your first week, either. Google itself says changes can take effect within a few hours, or not for months. Expect most of your early visitors to arrive through your Instagram bio and word of mouth, with search traffic building up slowly after that.

How to Split Your Time Without Adding Work

You don't need to block off an extra day a week for this. This split works for most local businesses:

Use Instagram to show recent work and keep up with your DMs. That's the channel for people who already know you.
Put what a stranger wants to know on your website: prices, service area, and a form or email address for requests.
Keep the link in your bio pointing to your own site, so a follower who gets serious has somewhere to land.
Spend 15 minutes every quarter checking your site. Are the hours and prices still right?

Frequently asked questions

Is an Instagram account enough for a small business?

Often, yes, if all you need is to stay in touch with people who already know you. The moment you also want strangers typing your service into Google to find you, you need pages a search engine can actually index and rank.

What does a website from Rachel Elz Studios cost?

EUR 1,200 flat, excluding VAT, hosting included. The only other recurring cost is your domain name, roughly 15 euros a year. And you only pay once you're happy with the result.

Do I need to stop posting once the site is live?

No. Your website exists for the person searching for what you do, and Instagram is for the people who already follow you. If posting is wearing you out, you can post less often without losing visibility.

I already get customers through DMs. Am I really missing out?

That's genuinely hard to know. You only see the requests that reach you, never the people who searched, didn't find you, and booked with someone else instead. A website of your own puts you in front of that second group too.

Doesn't the link in my bio count as a website?

That kind of link page helps followers pick where to go next, but it doesn't do much more than that. Someone with a real question is looking for a price, a way of working, and a way to get in touch. Point your bio link at a page that actually answers that.

Want to reach searchers as well as followers?

That's what [[PAKKET-LINK]] is for: a complete website for EUR 1,200 flat, excluding VAT, ready in 2-3 weeks. You only pay once you're happy with it, and you keep your Instagram running right alongside it.

See the Get Found package