Is Facebook Replacing Traditional Websites?

Yesterday's post Do Small Businesses Still Need a Website? generated more traffic and emails than usual.   The general consensus from the feedback is that despite the growth of social media, having a traditional website is still a good idea.

But the responses got me wondering if I correctly framed the issue. 

We've noticed a steady increase in the number of small businesses using Facebook as their primary or exclusive website.  They are doing this because it's cheap, easy and their customers are on Facebook.

The chart below, from eMarketer, illustrates this trend. 

  

What is interesting about this data is not that 67% of the respondents are using Facebook to drive traffic to their site; it's that a large percentage are planning on conducting business on Facebook instead of driving traffic to their traditional site. 

So the right question may not be "Do small businesses still need a traditional website?", but rather "Is Facebook becoming the only website a small business needs?"

Comments

[Increase Traffic]

I do not think facebook will ever replace business websites. I think that if a business is well, has enough revenue, and plenty of information to provide it will have its own site. I think the smaller businesses are the ones that will tend to benefit more from social networking sites. We also have to keep in mind that it depends on the service or products the business provides.

[Christian Joe]

facebook is cool,but i don't use it anymore...

[David Fischlowitz]

Small businesses with lots of detailed information or technical specifications for their products or services will always benefit from their stand-alone website, but social media venues will increasingly drive traffic to those sites. Small businesses with the primary function of getting customers on the phone or in the door will transition to exclusive social media presence foregoing their traditional website.

[michael webster]

Because it is easy to do, small businesses might be tempted with Facebook.

Personally, I think that this will be a mistake because Facebook solves a problem that small businesses don't have: it shows your customers what your other customers look like and who they are. That is a network problem most small businesses don't need to solve.