Website Features by Industry: A Kenyan Business Checklist

The right website features by industry are not a matter of taste. A hotel lives or dies on rate tables and a booking path, a school on its fee page, a SACCO on proof that it is licensed. This guide lists, sector by sector, the pages, integrations and trust signals Kenyan businesses need, so you can brief a designer properly or audit the site you already have.

Use it as a reference. Find your sector, tick off what you have, and follow the links to the deeper guides where we cover each industry in detail.

Why one template doesn't fit every sector

Most website templates are built for a generic company: a big banner, three service boxes, an "about us" section and a contact form. That layout is fine for a consultancy. It is wrong for a clinic, where the first thing a worried patient needs is the opening hours and whether their insurance is accepted. It is wrong for a car yard, where buyers want to filter stock by price and year. The template does not know your customer's first question.

Every sector has three layers to get right:

• The first answer. The one thing most visitors arrived to find. If it takes more than a tap or two on a phone, you lose them.
• The working parts. Integrations that turn interest into a booking, an order, an application or a payment: M-Pesa, booking calendars, listings, portals.
• The trust signals. Registration numbers, named people, real photographs, published policies. These matter more in Kenya than many owners assume, because buyers have learnt to check for fake pages and fraudsters using real business names.

Get the first answer right and you will already be ahead of most sites in your sector. The sections below give you all three layers for each type of business. If you sell something we have not covered, borrow from the closest match: a guesthouse reads the hotel section, a training college reads the school section, a tour operator takes a bit of both hospitality and booking.

Quick reference table

Here is the short version. The sections that follow explain the reasoning.

Hospitality and restaurants

Hotels, lodges and guesthouses

Guests rarely book a property they have not seen properly. Your site's job is to show each room as it really is and make booking direct at least as easy as booking through an agency.

• A page for every room type with real photographs, bed set-up, size and inclusions.
• Rate tables that separate resident and non-resident prices, with season dates.
• A booking engine on the site, either embedded from the system you already use or built for you.
• Deposits by M-Pesa for local guests and card for international ones, with the cancellation policy shown before payment.
• Separate pages for conferences, weddings and retreats, which bring in group revenue the agencies rarely send.

Trust signals: your classification by the Tourism Regulatory Authority if you hold one, a working map pin, and photos dated recently enough that the paint colour matches. We cover the tactics in detail in our guide to getting more direct bookings from a hotel website.

Restaurants and cafés

Nobody wants to download a PDF menu over mobile data while standing on Moi Avenue deciding where to eat. The menu belongs on the page, as text, with prices.

• A text menu by section, with prices and simple dietary markers.
• Opening hours, including public holidays, matching your Google Business Profile exactly.
• Table reservations with date, time and party size.
• Optional: your own ordering page for pickup and delivery, paid by M-Pesa, running alongside the delivery apps.

Our separate post on running online ordering from your own website walks through the ordering flow and kitchen alerts.

Schools and healthcare

Schools

A parent shortlisting schools is doing homework over several evenings. They compare curriculum, fees, transport and boarding, often with a spouse or relative in another town. The site that makes this comparison easy gets the visit.

• Curriculum stated plainly: CBE, IGCSE, IB or a mix, and at which levels.
• The fee structure per term, including transport, meals, boarding and one-off charges.
• Payment instructions with the Paybill number and the exact account reference format, usually the admission number.
• An admissions page with the process, dates and an online application.
• A term calendar and notices someone in the office can update without a developer.

Trust signals: current news, real photographs taken with parental consent, and named leadership. The Data Protection Act, 2019 needs parental consent before you process a child's personal data, which includes photos. See our full list of school website must-haves for parents and admissions, and the school website design page for how we build them.

Clinics, hospitals and dental practices

Healthcare visitors are often anxious and in a hurry. Answer "do you treat this, do you take my cover, are you open now?" in the first screen.

• One page per service or specialty, describing the problem in the words patients use.
• Doctor profiles with specialty, qualifications and clinic days.
• A list of insurers and SHA arrangements, kept current by the front desk.
• An appointment request form that asks for the minimum: name, phone, department, preferred day.
• Branch pages with hours, emergency contacts and directions.

Health information is sensitive personal data under the Data Protection Act, so forms must collect as little as possible and submissions should not sit in a shared inbox. Our guide to clinic websites and online appointments covers this step by step.

Professional services: law and finance

Law firms

People searching for an advocate usually search for their problem first: a land dispute in Nakuru, a divorce, a wrongful dismissal. Your site needs to meet them at that problem and then show who will handle it.

• Practice area pages written in everyday language, each naming the lead advocate.
• Advocate profiles with full names, year of admission and areas of work.
• Articles that explain processes, such as succession or land transfer, accurately.
• An enquiry form with fields for a conflict check, routed to one monitored inbox.

Advocates market within the Law Society of Kenya's rules on publicity, so leave out rankings, success rates and promises. Our law firm website content guide has a list of what to publish and what to avoid.

SACCOs and microfinance

Before joining, a prospective member wants proof the SACCO is real and regulated. Existing members want their balance and an easy way to pay.

• A governance page: registration, SASRA licence status for deposit-taking SACCOs, the board, AGM notices and audited accounts.
• One page per loan and savings product, with how interest is calculated and every fee.
• Paybill instructions with the account format your system expects, plus a worked example.
• A membership application online, and a member portal once your core system can support it.
• A fraud warning listing your official numbers and channels.

We go deeper in the SACCO website and member portal guide.

Accountants, consultants and other advisers

These firms can mostly use the law firm pattern: a page per service, named people with real credentials, articles that answer common questions, and an enquiry form that asks enough to qualify the lead. If you are a member of a professional body such as ICPAK, mention it and let clients check.

Property, cars and logistics

Real estate agencies and developers

Kenyan property buyers have been burned by fake listings and land fraud often enough to check the agent first. The site must be useful and verifiable at once.

• Searchable listings by area, price band, bedrooms and sale or rent, managed from an admin panel.
• Listing details that save a wasted viewing: tenure, plot or floor size, service charge, water and power.
• Off-plan project pages with payment plans, approvals and construction progress.
• A WhatsApp button on each listing that pre-fills the property reference.
• A page for diaspora buyers explaining viewings by video, deposits and conveyancing.

Show your Estate Agents Registration Board registration. More in our post on real estate website features that generate leads.

Car dealers and importers

• A stock list with make, model, year of manufacture, mileage, transmission and price, filterable on a phone.
• The same set of photographs for every car, including the odometer and any damage.
• Status labels: in the yard, in transit, or available to order.
• A finance enquiry form and a plain explanation of the import process.

The single biggest credibility problem for car yard sites is sold cars left online. See how to keep a car dealer website's stock current.

Logistics, transport and courier companies

• Route and service pages: which corridors, which cargo, which towns for last-mile delivery.
• A quote form that asks for origin, destination, cargo type, weight, dimensions and dates.
• A shipment tracking lookup, starting with manual updates if you have no operations system yet.
• A compliance page with licences, insurance and fleet details, ready to link from a tender.

Our guide to logistics websites with quotes and tracking explains when tracking needs a custom system.

Churches, NGOs and SACCOs

These three have something in common: they handle other people's money and depend on trust that is easily damaged. Their websites need more transparency than a typical business site.

Churches and ministries

• Service times, languages and branches on the home page.
• A sermon archive with audio for members on limited data, as well as video.
• One giving page listing the Paybill and the account name for each purpose: tithe, offering, building fund, missions.
• A page per ministry or fellowship with meeting times and a contact person.

Read our church website guide to sermons, events and giving for how to set up giving references so the treasurer can reconcile them.

NGOs and non-profits

• A funder page with registration details, board, audited accounts, annual reports and key policies.
• Programme pages: the problem, the work, the location, the partners and evidence of results.
• Donations by M-Pesa for local supporters and card for international donors.
• Safeguarding and data protection policies linked from every footer.

More in the NGO website guide to donor trust.

Why SACCOs belong here too

A SACCO site that publishes its audited accounts and board does the same job as an NGO funder page: it lets a careful person verify the organisation before handing over money. If you run a SACCO, read both this section and the finance section above.

Online stores and booking businesses

Online shops

Selling online in Kenya mostly comes down to payment and delivery. The checklist:

• M-Pesa STK push at checkout, so the payment request appears on the customer's phone and the order confirms itself.
• Card payments if you sell to corporates, tourists or the diaspora.
• Delivery zones and fees shown before checkout: CBD, estates, satellite towns, upcountry by courier.
• Stock tracking per product and variant.
• A returns policy you will honour, and order records your accountant can use for eTIMS invoicing.

Salons, spas, studios and other appointment businesses

Barbers, beauty salons, physiotherapists, photographers, driving schools and tutors share one problem: empty slots and no-shows. Their key features are a service price list, live availability per staff member, an M-Pesa deposit to hold the slot, and automatic reminders. We explain the set-up in our guide to online booking systems for salons and service businesses.

Features every sector needs anyway

Whatever your industry, a few things are not optional:

1. Mobile-first layout. Most visitors will be on a phone, often on patchy data outside the big towns. Pages must load fast and work with one thumb.
2. Click-to-call and WhatsApp. Many Kenyans would rather send a WhatsApp message than fill a form. Offer both.
3. A Google Business Profile with the same name, hours and phone number as the website.
4. HTTPS and a privacy notice that describes what your forms actually collect. The Data Protection Act applies to every business that collects personal data.
5. An admin area so the person who knows about a change can make it the same day.
6. Your own domain, such as a .co.ke, registered in the business's name rather than the designer's.

How to use this checklist

Here is a practical way to turn the lists above into a brief:

1. Write down the five questions your staff answer most often on the phone and WhatsApp. Those become your first pages.
2. Pick the one working part that would save the most time or bring the most money: online booking, M-Pesa checkout, admissions, quote requests.
3. List the documents and registrations that prove you are genuine and gather them before design starts.
4. Decide who in your team will update the site, and how often.
5. Set a budget for phase one and a list for phase two.

A worked example: say a small private clinic in Machakos has KES 80,000 to spend this year. A business website with service pages, doctor profiles, an insurance page and an appointment request form fits within the starting price for a business site, from KES 20,000 + VAT, plus content and photography. A full booking system with live slots per doctor starts from KES 60,000 + VAT, so the clinic could do both, or launch the site first and add live booking after three months of seeing how many requests come in. The second route is often wiser, because the request data tells you whether patients actually want to book online.

If you would like help turning your sector's list into a priced plan, our web development service covers sites for every industry above. You can also browse all our industry pages or send us a short brief and we will tell you what to build first.