If people find you by typing what you do into Google, you need a website as well as Instagram. Instagram is very good at showing your work to people who already follow you or who are browsing for ideas. It does not appear in Google results for “nails near me” or “barber Rathmines”, it has nowhere reliable for hours and prices, it cannot take a deposit without sending people off to another app, and the account and the audience belong to Meta, not to you. If you are booked out through referrals and DMs and happy to stay that size, Instagram on its own can be fine for now.
The rest of this guide goes through what each one does, the gaps, and the smallest website that closes them.
What Instagram does well
We are not going to tell a lash technician in Ongar or a cake maker in Navan to post less. Instagram earns its place for four reasons.
It shows proof. A reel of a skin fade, a before and after of a set of brows, a wedding cake going out the door. People want to see the work before they trust you with their own head or their own party.
It keeps existing customers warm. A story saying “two spaces left Saturday” fills chairs. A photo of the new seasonal menu gets a regular back in.
It is low friction to ask a question. A DM is less effort than a phone call for a lot of people under forty.
It spreads through other people. A client tags you, her friend sees it, and that is a new customer you did nothing extra to find.
Where Instagram stops
The problems start with the customer who does not know your name yet.
Google search. When a pipe bursts in Swords at nine at night, nobody opens Instagram. They type “emergency plumber Swords” into Google or ask their phone. The same goes for “dentist Dundrum”, “nails near me” and “man with a van Tallaght”. Google indexes little of what sits inside Instagram, and an Instagram profile does not rank for a service plus a place. Your profile turns up when someone searches your exact name, which means they already found you some other way.
Hours. There is no hours field on Instagram that anyone trusts. People check opening hours on Google Maps, and if there is no Business Profile, or the profile says you are open on a bank holiday when you are not, you get the one-star review and never knew it was coming.
Prices. A price list buried in a story highlight goes out of date and has to be tapped through one slide at a time. A page with a plain list on it is easy to find, easy to quote and easy to update.
Bookings and deposits. The Instagram version is a DM back and forth, a Revolut request, a screenshot, and a note in your phone. A booking page lets someone pick a time at midnight, pay the deposit, and get a reminder the day before, while you are asleep. We have written separately about how to take online bookings.
Ownership. You cannot export your followers. If the account is hacked, disabled by mistake or just shown to fewer people after the next change to the feed, there is nothing you can do and nobody to ring. A website on a .ie domain in your own name, and a customer list in a booking system you control, are yours and move with you.
People without the app. Instagram asks visitors to log in after a few taps. The person who deleted the app, the older customer who never had it, the dad trying to find a kids’ barber on a laptop: they see a login wall and go elsewhere. A website opens in any browser with no account.
AI search. ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google’s own AI answers build their replies from websites and Google Business Profiles they can read. Content inside Instagram is largely behind a login and out of their reach. We cannot promise any of these tools will mention you, but they cannot mention what they cannot read.
The three things compared
| Job to be done | Google Business Profile | Your own website | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Show your work | Excellent | A photo gallery, in Google’s layout | Good, and you choose the order |
| Be found for “near me” and “trade plus town” searches | No | Yes | Yes, and it feeds the profile |
| Hours, including bank holidays | A story at best | Yes, with special hours | Yes |
| Prices | A highlight that goes stale | A services list | A full price list |
| Bookings with a deposit | Only by linking out | Only by linking out | Built in |
| Who owns it | Meta | You: the domain and the content | |
| Works without an app or a login | Not reliably | Yes | Yes |
| Readable by AI search tools | Barely | Yes | Yes |
The pattern is clear enough. Instagram is for showing and staying in touch. The profile and the site are for being found and being chosen.
How people in Ireland actually look for a business
Think about the last three local things you searched for yourself. For most of us it was Google or Google Maps, on a phone, with a place name or “near me” attached: “coffee Grafton Street”, “physio Blackrock”, “cake maker Navan”. Sometimes it was Siri or the car’s sat nav.
Instagram search is a different habit. People open it when they already have a name, or when they are browsing a hashtag for ideas before they have decided who to book. Both habits matter. Only one of them is a person with their wallet out, looking for someone like you, right now.
When Instagram alone is fine
There are honest cases where we would not push a website on anyone.
- You are booked out through referrals, you have a waiting list, and you do not want to grow.
- You are testing an idea for a few months and do not want to spend money until you know it works.
- Your trade is genuinely visual, your customers live on Instagram, and they find you through other people’s tags rather than by searching. Some nail artists and tattoo studios run this way for years.
- It is a side business and the hours are whatever suits you that week.
Even then, claim your free Google Business Profile so that your hours and your phone number on Google are right. That takes an hour and costs nothing. The steps are in how to set up a Google Business Profile in Ireland.
The smallest website worth having
You do not need a ten page site. One well made page does the job for most businesses that live on Instagram: your name and what you do at the top, where you are with an Eircode and a map, your hours, your prices or “from” prices, six to eight photos of real work, a WhatsApp button, a booking button, and a link to your Instagram. On a .ie domain registered in your own name.
That one page plus a verified Google Business Profile covers every gap in the list above. We keep a longer checklist in what a small business website should include, but a single page that is correct beats ten pages that are not.
Making the two work together
Put the site in your bio and send people to the booking page, not the home page. When a price changes, change it on the site first, because that is where Google reads it, then post about it. Ask for reviews on Google rather than in comments, because a Google review is read by strangers and a comment is read by followers.
We would not embed your Instagram feed on the site. Those widgets slow the page down on 4G and break when Meta changes something. Pick your eight best photos, put them on the site, and swap them every few months.
What we do for clients
Most of the nail technicians, brow studios and cake makers we talk to already have a good Instagram and no website. We do not ask them to change how they post. We build the page that does the other job: found on Google, hours and prices right, booking and deposit handled, all on a .ie domain in their name.
That is Essentials, €499 to set up and then €50 a month, which includes the domain, hosting, the Google Business Profile set up and verified, and a private edit page so you can change a price from your phone between clients. Complete, at €1,499 and €100 a month, adds online bookings with deposits, card and Apple Pay payments, review requests after each visit, and a chat assistant that knows your prices and hands off to your WhatsApp. The full list is on the pricing page.
Your Instagram stays exactly where it is, doing the thing it is good at.