We build websites, so you already know which way we are supposed to answer this.
Here is the honest version instead: for a lot of Cambodian businesses, a Facebook page really is enough. This article is about how to tell whether yours is one of them.
What Facebook genuinely does well
Start here, because the case for a website is weak if it pretends otherwise.
Reach without effort. Fourteen million people in Cambodia use Facebook — close to eight in ten of the entire population. No website you build will ever have that distribution built in.
Discovery. Someone shares your post, their friend sees it. A website has no equivalent. Nobody's cousin accidentally lands on your homepage.
Social proof that updates itself. Followers, comments, people tagging friends. That is real credibility and it costs nothing.
Messaging where people already are. Messenger reaches around 8.9 million people here. Telegram is the default for business. A customer messaging you on Facebook is not switching apps or filling in a form.
It is free. Genuinely free, forever, with no hosting bill and no developer.
Any article that skips this section is selling you something.
The four things it cannot do
1. It does not appear in Google
Someone searching "office chair Phnom Penh" or "coffee roaster Cambodia wholesale" gets shops with websites. Your page might appear if they search your exact business name — which requires already knowing you exist.
That is the whole gap. Facebook is excellent at reaching people scrolling. It is close to useless for reaching people looking. Those are different customers, and the second kind is usually the one ready to buy.
2. It cannot hold structured information
Try to answer, from a Facebook page, in under ten seconds:
- What are the dimensions of the medium size?
- Is the $45 price with or without delivery to Toul Kork?
- Which colours are actually in stock right now?
- What is the warranty?
The answers might exist — in a post from March, in a comment reply, in an album caption. They are not findable. This is why you answer the same three questions forty times a day: not because customers are lazy, but because your page has no place to put an answer that stays put.
3. It cannot be forwarded as credibility
Real scenario. A café owner wants to stock your coffee. She needs to show her business partner. She sends… a Facebook page.
Her partner sees photos, some posts, an unclear price. There is nothing that says this is a real business with a real address that will still exist next year. A one-page website with your farms, your process and your wholesale terms does that job in thirty seconds.
The bigger the purchase, the more this matters. Nobody researches a $3 coffee. Everybody researches a $690 sofa.
4. You do not own it
The one people underestimate.
Pages get hacked. Accounts get disabled by automated systems with no appeal that reaches a human. Reach changes when the algorithm changes, and it changes without warning.
If your entire business is a Facebook page and you lose access on a Tuesday, you have lost your customer list, your photos, your reviews and your only channel — all at once. There is no support number to call in Phnom Penh.
A website you own on a domain you registered is insurance. Not exciting insurance, but the kind you notice the absence of exactly once.
When you genuinely do not need a website
Four honest cases:
You sell to people who already know you. A neighbourhood shop with regulars, where nobody is researching before they walk in. Facebook plus a phone number is correct. Spend the $400 on stock.
Your product cannot be photographed or specified. Some services sell entirely on relationship and word of mouth. A website is a business card you paid too much for.
You cannot keep it current. A website showing last year's prices is worse than no website. If nobody will own the updates, do not build one — or budget for someone who will.
You have not proved anyone wants the product. If you are still testing whether the thing sells, sell it on Facebook first. Build the website when you know what you are selling and to whom. A website will not fix an unwanted product.
The three questions
If you answer yes to two or more, a website will probably pay for itself:
1. Do you answer the same questions every day? Price, size, delivery, availability. Every repeated question is a page that could have answered it. This alone often justifies the cost in hours saved.
2. Would a serious buyer research you before committing? Anything over roughly $100, anything wholesale, anything a customer explains to someone else. If they would look you up, there should be something to find.
3. Do you lose sales to businesses that look more established? If your product is as good but a competitor with a website wins, you are not losing on product. You are losing on the appearance of permanence.
What it actually costs
So you can weigh it honestly, rather than against a number you imagine:
We wrote about the whole market in detail here, including the running costs that rarely appear in a quote.
If your average sale is $50 and a website brings you one extra customer a month, a $900 site pays for itself in about eighteen months and then keeps working. If your average sale is $500, it pays for itself in two.
The answer for most product businesses
Keep the Facebook page. Add a website. They do different jobs.
Facebook is how people find you. The website is where you send them once they are interested — the place that answers price, specification, delivery and "are you real" without you typing it again.
The page keeps doing what it is good at. The website stops you being the search engine for your own business.
We build product websites in Phnom Penh, from $400. You can see five complete examples on our work page — or message us and we will tell you honestly whether you need one.
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