What is a website for in 2026?

A Google profile, an Instagram account, a page on a booking platform: many independents wonder whether a website is still of any use. It is, and for precise things the rest doesn’t do, or does in your place and by its own rules. Here is which ones, and what it takes for it to deliver them.

Getting found when people look for you

When someone types “bakery near me” or “osteopath Lyon 7”, they first see a map and business profiles. Google ranks these results by three criteria: relevance, distance and prominence. In prominence, it counts among other things the number of websites that link to your business, and your reviews.

To build the profile itself, Google draws on several sources, including public web content and the business’s official website. Without a website, what Google says about you comes from what others have written. With an up-to-date website, it has a source that comes from you.

Getting cited by assistants

In France, 48% of people used generative AI in 2025, against 20% two years earlier, and nearly three quarters of them use it to look for information (Crédoc for Arcep, 2026). These answers rely on web pages.

Google’s generated answers show links to the sites that back them up. To appear there, Google asks for no special optimization: the page must be indexed and able to appear with a snippet. ChatGPT also cites its sources, provided the site lets its search bot, OAI-SearchBot, through. A readable website, which clearly states your opening hours, your prices and your specialty, is what these assistants will read to answer in your place.

Reassuring before the first contact

Before calling a craftsperson, trusting a practice with your teeth or booking a table for a birthday, people check. In the United States, 54% of consumers go and look at a business’s website after reading good reviews of it (BrightLocal, 2026): the review sparks interest, the website confirms.

A website that shows the place, the real people, the work done and the prices says there is someone behind the door, and that this someone cares. A dated website says the opposite, even when it isn’t true.

Answering without picking up

The same questions come back all day: opening hours, rates, directions, parking, “do you do quotes?”. Each can have its answer online, up to date, readable on a phone, the device of 91% of French people (Crédoc for Arcep, 2026). The phone then rings to book an appointment, and no longer to ask what time you close.

Prompting action

A page has a goal: book, call, ask for a quote, come by. The website makes it obvious, with a button that leads to the right place: your booking tool, your (clickable) number, your form. A visitor who has to search for how to reach you is a visitor who leaves.

Owning your shop window

On a social network, the platform decides how many of your followers see what you post. An account can also be suspended or hacked. In 2025, Meta disabled business Facebook and Instagram accounts without notice, and the Queensland Small Business Commissioner drew simple advice from it: have a site of your own and a contact list, and never depend on a single platform.

The two complement each other: social media brings people in, the website convinces and prompts action. Link them to each other.

One page is often enough

For a shop, a practice or a workshop, a website doesn’t need twenty pages. A single well-built page answers almost everything: who you are, what you do, what it costs, where and when, how to reach you. It loads fast, reads with a thumb, and is kept up to date in a few minutes.

Speed matters too. Google says so: relevance comes first, but its ranking systems take the Core Web Vitals into account, and it considers good a display of the main content in 2.5 seconds at most (the Largest Contentful Paint).

Good habits

A website is useful as long as it tells the truth. A few habits are enough to keep it useful:

• Change opening hours everywhere on the same day: on the website, on the Google profile, on the door. For a closure of a few days, the Google profile has its special hours; beyond six days, Google advises marking the business “temporarily closed”. It also recommends confirming holiday hours, even when they don’t change.
• Reply to reviews, good and bad. In the United States, 89% of consumers expect the business to reply (BrightLocal, 2026).
• Open Search Console once a month: Google says there which searches lead to you, and warns of problems by email.
• Reread the page from a phone, in real conditions: in the street, on 4G.
• Update prices and the menu as soon as they change.
• Renew the domain name on time, and turn on automatic renewal: a forgotten domain means a site that disappears overnight.
• Keep backups and apply updates quickly: the vast majority of website attacks go through security flaws that publishers nonetheless fix regularly, Cybermalveillance.gouv.fr points out, and it also advises serving the site over HTTPS only.

What the law requires

In France, a business website carries legal notices: the company’s identity (for a sole proprietorship, the name followed by “EI”), its registration, its VAT number if it has one, and the site’s host, with its address and phone. Leaving them out exposes you to a fine of up to €75,000 for a sole proprietorship and €375,000 for a company.

If it sets cookies that aren’t essential, refusing must be as easy as accepting, and a permanent link, in the footer for example, must let people change their mind.

In short: a website gets you found, reassures, answers questions in your place and prompts action. It stays yours, whatever the platforms decide.