When a business wants to go digital, the first idea is often the same: build an app. It feels like the serious, modern choice. But for a large share of customers across Africa, an app is not the easiest way in. It can be the hardest.
What an app asks of a customer
Before someone can use an app, they have to find it in a store, download it on mobile data, make space for it on a phone that may already be full, create an account, remember a password, and then remember to open it again next time. Every one of those steps is a place where people quietly give up.
None of this means apps are bad. It means an app is a cost the customer pays before receiving any value. For a bank or a ride service used every day, that cost is worth paying. For a one-time purchase, a quick consultation or a service someone uses a few times a year, it often is not.
The interface people already have
Most customers already have a powerful interface on their phone, open all day, that they trust and know how to use: WhatsApp. They already message shops to ask prices, send photos of what they want, receive account numbers and share receipts. A great deal of commerce is already happening there, informally.
Sometimes the best interface is not a new one. It is the one people already open many times a day.
The opportunity is not to replace that behaviour, but to support it properly: to connect the chat a customer already uses to the systems behind the business.
What a real WhatsApp service looks like
A serious WhatsApp service is more than an automatic reply. Built on Meta's official WhatsApp Business Platform, it can:
- guide a customer with buttons and simple in-chat forms instead of long typing;
- send payment details and confirm automatically when a transfer arrives;
- receive a photo or document and return a result;
- hand the conversation to a real member of staff at any point;
- keep a proper record, so nothing depends on one person's phone.
This is the approach we are taking with MelaninIQ for Bismid Cosmetics: choose a plan, pay, send a photo and receive a cosmetic skincare routine, all on the store's existing WhatsApp number.
When an app still makes sense
We are not against apps. If people use a service every day, need to work fully offline for long periods, or need features a chat cannot offer, an app or a web app is still the right tool. The question is simply which comes first: the technology the business wants to build, or the behaviour the customer already has.
The real question
So should every African service become an app? No. Every service should become easier to reach. Sometimes that means an app. Often it means meeting people in the chat they already use, and doing the hard work behind the scenes so that it feels simple.
