An Instagram website for a small business
Your profile is rented. The page behind your link does not have to be.
For a small business, Instagram is usually the shopfront and the bio link is the door. Most of the effort goes into the shopfront, which is understandable and also the wrong way round: the shopfront belongs to somebody else.
What the page has to do
Three things, in this order.
Answer the question they arrived with. Someone saw a post and tapped. They want to buy, book, check whether you cover their area, or find your hours. Lead with the most common one and put it on the second card.
Be findable when the post is gone. A post has a life of about a day. A page has a title, a description and a web address, so it can be searched for, bookmarked, shared in a message and printed on a card.
Collect something you keep. Email addresses. A follower count is a number on a platform that can change its rules. An address is a way to reach a person, and it works the same on the day the algorithm stops showing your posts.
What to measure
Two numbers are worth watching, and neither is followers.
The first is how many people who land on the page do the thing. Visits and sign-ups are both counted, so the ratio is right there. If it is low, the page is asking for the wrong thing or asking too late.
The second is which post sent them. Tracked links tell you which post, platform and day produced a visit or a sale, so you find out what is worth making more of. That works without cookies, which matters because cookies are unreliable inside an in-app browser.
What it should cost
Not much, and it should not take a percentage. IG Websites is free to start, $6.99 a month for the plan with forms and stats history, and takes 0% of anything you sell. Stripe's card fee still applies and goes to Stripe. See the pricing page.
The half hour version
If you do nothing else: build the page, put your hours and location in the intro sentence, put your booking or ordering link on the second card, add a sign-up form, and paste the address into your bio. The steps are here.
Questions
Do I need a proper website as well?
Eventually, often. But a page that answers the question people arrive with beats a five page site nobody reaches, and this one takes ten minutes.
Can I use my own domain?
Yes, on Pro+ at $10 a month. Until then your address is www.igwebsites.com/yourname, which is a real address you can print.
Will this help me show up on Google?
It gives you a page Google can read, with a title and description you control on the Pro plan. That is the starting requirement rather than a guarantee, and it is more than an Instagram profile alone gives you.