You have a Facebook page, a WhatsApp number and customers who keep coming back. So why invest in a website in 2026?
Because the way people choose a business has changed. Before calling, they search. Before paying, they check. And more and more, they ask an artificial intelligence. Here are five concrete reasons to get ahead of it.
1. Your customers check before they buy
A website reassures people before the first conversation even starts. A DreamHost survey of 1,201 American consumers, carried out in late 2025, gives three telling figures:
- 39% say they have already decided against buying from a business because it had no website;
- 58% often or always look at a business’s website to confirm something they saw elsewhere;
- businesses with a website are seen as 41% more trustworthy.
Two caveats: the survey covers the United States, and DreamHost sells web hosting. Treat these figures as a trend, not as a fact about Cameroon. But you already know the reflex: when a stranger asks you to pay up front, you first try to find out who they are.
2. Your future customers are online, on their phones
In Cameroon, DataReportal counts 12.6 million internet users at the end of 2025, or 41.9% of the population, and 29 million active mobile connections.
In other words, the market is there, and it runs on the phone. A website designed for mobile first, light and readable even on an average network, is no longer a luxury. It is the shop window your customers carry in their pocket.
3. AI assistants are starting to recommend businesses
In one year, the share of American consumers who used an AI such as ChatGPT to find a local business went from 6% to 45%, according to BrightLocal’s 2026 survey of 1,002 adults. The trend comes from the United States, but these tools are already on your customers’ phones.
An assistant can only talk about what it can read. A clear page that says who you are, what you sell, where and at what price gives it something to recommend. A photo of a menu posted on Facebook, far less so.
4. A website answers for you, day and night
“How much is it?”, “Where are you?”, “Do you deliver to Bonamoussadi?” These questions come back every day on WhatsApp, often when you are busy.
A website answers them once and for all, even at 11 p.m. The customer who then writes to you already knows what you offer. You keep WhatsApp for what matters: closing the sale.
5. It can sell, not just present
A website or an app can also take payment without waiting for your reply. That is what we have built for our clients:
- on Tikaypass, you buy your ticket by mobile money and show it as a QR code at the door;
- on Ya’Noo, you order your meal, follow the courier on the map and pay by Orange Money, MTN Mobile Money or on delivery.
In both cases, customers buy when they feel like it, including while you sleep.
Where to start?
You don’t need twenty pages. A useful first version fits in a few sections:
- what you do, and for whom;
- your prices, or at least a range;
- proof: photos, past work, customer reviews;
- a clearly visible WhatsApp button.
You can add payment, booking or a customer area later, when your customers ask for it. What matters is to exist, clearly, at an address that belongs to you.