What is better for effective business development – a website or social networks? This question is relevant, first of all, for beginning businessmen who decided to bring their business to the Internet. And just for them our article.

Yes, recently, the popularity of social networks has grown significantly. Their audience totals millions and billions. And every day hundreds of new pages appear that set a goal – business development. So maybe the need for sites has disappeared altogether? Maybe just create a page and skim the cream off of it?

Let’s take a closer look at all the pros and cons of these options.

Group or page in social networks

There are many sites: VKontakte, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter. When choosing, rely, firstly, on the preferences of your target audience (where there is more, go there), and secondly, on competitors (there are 2 strategies: go where everyone is, or go where there is no one else).

Also pay attention to the functionality and orientation of the site. For example, the VKontakte community is ideal for creating a kind of online store, and the bet is on text content there. The same Instagram is aimed at the visual component, and if your business has the opportunity to create spectacular photos, Instagram will definitely suit you.

Well, now about the more general advantages of social networks in comparison with the site:

Low entry threshold: you can create a very decent page with a description of goods/services without special skills.
Good usability: Internet marketers and usability VK, FB, OK, Twitter, etc. Already done everything for you.
The ability to quickly gather an audience: send newsletters to friends and get the first participants on the first day. Of course, in the future you will have to connect the advertisement anyway, but, as a rule, it is much cheaper compared to the same context.

Disadvantages are also available:

High competition: these are the consequences of a low entry threshold because everyone can create a page on the social network.
    Patterning: if your product/service is the same as your competitors, your groups will be almost like twin brothers.
    Limited functionality: everything remains within the capabilities of a particular social network. For example, VKontakte has the functionality of ordering online and adding goods to the basket. On Facebook and Instagram such “things” are not yet provided.
    Promotion outside the social network: to advance offline or in a regular search, having only a group, is much more difficult.
    Inaccessibility of the b2b sector: b2b products are not searched on social networks. Social networks are designed for the end-user market. And an attempt to sell machine tools or industrial boilers through a group is usually a waste of time and effort. But there are exceptions. 🙂

Web Site

Your web site, created completely from scratch independently, on the CMS or on the designer, depending on the goals, as well as the available resources. About all three options, as well as about how designers fit into this concept.

Now let’s deal with the benefits:

Complete freedom of action and choice: you create the site as you want, as you want and with the options you need. Modern CMS provides great opportunities. And for completely non-standard projects, there is always the option of writing from scratch with experienced programmers.
Broad audience: unlike a group whose potential audience is due only to a social network, a site promoted in search engines does not have audience restrictions. There are a lot of promotion options: organic search, contextual advertising, SERM, the same social networks. The limitation is only in your imagination, and, of course, in your budget.
Monitoring: install Yandex.Metrica or Google Analytics and track the effectiveness of ongoing promotions, promotion channels and behavioral factors. In social networks there is only a section of statistics, and it gives very limited data in comparison with these systems.
Ownership: as a full owner of the site, you can sell it, place advertising on it, transfer it to another hosting – whatever you want.

But of course there are disadvantages:

Web Sites: building a site is more difficult. Here, either pay web studios or use free designers, whose functionality is very limited, if it comes to the free version.
Promotion: in order to bring the site to visible positions and gain traffic, it takes time and money. The same goes for other promotion methods. By the way, we have gathered all the options for attracting traffic here.

Сonclusions

From the lists above it can be seen that social networks have a number of undeniable advantages. But at the same time they also have limitations that will not allow you to fully expand your business on the Internet. Social networks are ideal for projects, only on the START itself or for very small companies that do not plan to grow yet.

If you really have long-term intentions for doing business on the Internet, then it is better to get your own high-quality website and back it up with a group or page. This is an ideal option because this is exactly what the leading companies of the world and just visionary businessmen do.

P.S. If you need a high-quality group or a high-quality site, or a site integrated with social networks, please contact! We will help in any case. 🙂