Do You Still Need a Website? What We Found
We looked at whether Kenyan businesses still need a website from six angles: selling, paid reach, apps, Google, platform risk and the kind of work you do. Here's what we found, and how to decide for your own business.
Kanyi Mwangi
Plenty of businesses in Kenya are doing well without a website. They sell through WhatsApp, get noticed on Instagram and TikTok, get found on Google Maps and get paid through M-Pesa. So it’s a fair question to ask whether a website is still worth it.
Most articles on this question come from companies selling websites, and they tend to list the same benefits: credibility, 24/7 availability, being found on Google. We wanted to answer it properly, so we looked at it from six different angles, each in its own post. This is what we found.
Start with what all of these tools are for
A website, WhatsApp, Instagram, a Google Business Profile, M-Pesa. Every one of them exists for the same reason: to make it easier for you to sell.
That’s the only fair way to judge any of them. Not whether it’s modern, or whether your competitors have one, but whether it makes selling easier for your business, now and as you grow.
Seen that way, a website isn’t competing with your WhatsApp or your Instagram. Each one does a different part of the work.
The one thing to remember
A website has never been how most people first notice a business. Before the internet, the address went on business cards and adverts. Then search engines sent people to websites. Today, social media and maps do much of the noticing.
What a website does is what happens after someone notices you. It’s where they get the whole picture, where their questions are answered, where they decide, and where what you’ve built stays put.
What we found
The steps of a sale haven’t changed. Who does them has. Every sale goes through the same steps: being noticed, showing what you offer, answering questions, taking the order, confirming, payment and delivery. On WhatsApp, you do almost all of them by hand. A website answers the questions everyone asks before they ask, and shows you the people who looked and left without messaging. [Read: Do You Still Need a Website If You Sell on WhatsApp?]
Paying to be seen is the same everywhere. What’s left afterwards isn’t. Getting noticed costs money on Instagram and on Google alike. The difference is what remains when you stop paying: pages that stay up, contacts you can reach again, reviews and proof that keep working, and a clear view of which spending brought customers. [Read: Do You Still Need a Website If You’re Already Paying to Be Seen?]
Apps took over the website’s old jobs, but not all of them. Maps took the listing, Instagram took the gallery, WhatsApp took the enquiry form, M-Pesa took payment. The one job no app took is holding the whole picture of your business in one place. Even Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, explains its apps on a website. [Read: Do You Still Need a Website When Apps Do Its Old Jobs?]
Google answers more questions itself now, and it reads your website to do it. More searches end on Google’s own page, and AI assistants answer before anyone clicks. Those answers are built from your Google profile, directories, reviews and your website. Your website is the part of that answer written in your own words. [Read: Do You Still Need a Website When Google Answers for You?]
A website is much harder to switch off. Platforms can stop showing your posts, or remove your account, because of what you said or because an automated system made a mistake. A link to your own website keeps working, and you can always send it to people. [Read: You Can Afford to Be Controversial with a Website]
Some work fits in a post. Some needs a page. A photo and a price works perfectly on social media. A portfolio, a course, a detailed price list or an explanation of how you work needs to be read in order and in full. A website lets you decide how your work is meant to be seen. [Read: Do You Still Need a Website If Your Work Fits in a Post?]
So, do you need one?
It depends on where your business is today, and where you want it to go.
A website makes sense now if any of these sound familiar:
- You answer the same questions in chats every day.
- You pay to boost posts, and when you stop, enquiries stop with them.
- Your business depends on one account you don’t control.
- Your customers need more than a photo and a price before they decide.
- People search for what you offer, and you want them to find your own words when they do.
If none of these fit yet, and WhatsApp, Instagram and a Google profile are handling your selling well, you don’t have to rush. But it’s worth planning for. As a business grows, it collects more questions, more work to show and more customers to keep in touch with, and those all need somewhere to live.
There’s also some evidence from close to home that more channels working together goes with healthier businesses. In a study of Kenyan micro-entrepreneurs, those who used the most digital platforms were twice as likely to say their business was in good health. That doesn’t prove a website alone makes a business healthier, but it points the same way as everything else we found: the businesses doing best don’t rely on just one place.
Our recommendation
Keep using the apps that work for you. Keep posting, keep chatting, keep your Google profile up to date.
Then, when you’re ready to build for the long run, give your business a home of its own: a place that holds the whole picture, answers the common questions, keeps what you’ve earned and is there whenever someone goes looking for you.
That’s what a website is for today. Not to replace the apps, but to make sure everything they bring you has somewhere to land.