Progressive Web Apps: Case Studies

Imagine that you have just launched your start-up. Your website looks awesome, but you don’t have the budget to develop a mobile app, which may be important to your business strategy. This is very expensive and a bit risky. You will spend a lot of time building a native app, but nobody knows your brand well. Will people trust your application​ enough to download it from an external store?

What’s more – will your customers/readers be determined enough to take some additional steps like closing your website, opening Google Play or the App Store and then wait till the app has installed?

Remember that people are much more demanding these days. They are also very impatient – they expect fast solutions. Downloading such an app from an external store doesn’t sound like a very quick operation and native apps are not very accessible for every user. From the User Experience point of view, there are many obstacles for the customer before he achieves his (and your) goal.

And another thing – are you sure that your clients will have enough internal storage space to download your app?

So you will invest a lot of money in building a mobile app (both for IOS and Android) and you can’t be sure that people will actually use it. Ahh… and don’t forget about all these large amounts of your marketing budget that you should spend on advertising and promotion!

But don’t panic, fortunately, you are living in 2019, when Progressive Web Apps ​are​ becoming a common solution when it comes to creating mobile apps!

Have you ever heard about Progressive Web Apps​? If not, now is your last chance to catch​ up on this latest technology trend or you will be left behind!

Today we would like to give you some inspiration and introduce success stories of brands that have already built Progressive Web Apps.

LANCOME

Lancome is a French luxury cosmetics house that has been owned by L’Oreal since 1964.​ The company distributes perfumes, skin care products and cosmetics internationally.

PROBLEM

Luxury cosmetics brand Lancome noticed that their mobile conversion rates (15%) are much lower than those on desktop (38%). The number of visitors on their mobile website were constantly increasing, however users weren’t taking any actions, like purchasing products. It looked like the mobile website wasn’t adjusted to shopping online and didn’t encourage users to do this.

Lancome decided to rebuild a mobile website so that it could provide a better shopping experience for their visitors.

SOLUTION

Their first idea was to build a mobile app, but then Lancome realised that this solution would be good only for their regular customers. Other visitors may not have the need to download their app because they don’t buy from them so often.

Lancome decided to build a mobile website that would give the native-app experience and engage more visitors by sending push notifications and working offline. It turned out that Progressive Web App had all the features they were looking for.

THE RESULTS

After applying the previously mentioned changes, Lancome noticed a higher engagement rate, even though, most of their visitors were using IOS (65%) and Progressive Web Apps weren’t supported by Apple. Users started to spend more time on their mobile website (session length increased by 53%)​ and what’s more, bounce rate decreased by 10%​ .​

On Android devices, Lancome benefited from sending push notifications, that were very similar to those that were already well known from native apps. They encouraged users to make a purchase – 8% of clients who tapped on a push notification bought something.​

Another advantage of building a Progressive Web App was the fact that the time until the page is interactive decreased by 84%.​

You can read a full case study here.

TRIVAGO

Trivago is a world famous hotel search engine that is available in 33 different languages. On the base of hotel’s information, pictures, ratings, reviews, filters and other features, Trivago helps their users to find the best offer.

PROBLEM

Trivago have noticed a significant increase of mobile users in recent years. The brand realised that the mobile experience is getting more and more important for their clients.

However, creating mobile solutions is not a piece of cake and this means making difficult choices. The company wasn’t sure whether people would accept the cost of downloading a mobile app, just to check if it fits their expectations. They also noticed that many people have problem with a quality mobile connection. Because of these reasons, Trivago was​ looking for different opportunities than a native app.

SOLUTION

Finally, they discovered Progressive Web Apps​, whose features seemed to be perfect for​ their needs. They were looking for the solution that would provide them with push notifications, ​offline mode​ and ​home screen shortcuts​. The most important factor for Trivago​ was the accessibility​ to this app ​through a standard mobile browser​.​

This solution helped them to build an app without having to involve big teams of software developers. They focused on the most important features in the beginning, like push notifications, offline access and the possibility to add the app to the home screen​. They said​ that one of the biggest challenges was to create an intuitive User Interface, because designing a mobile appearance is much more different than that on standard websites. According to Laura Oades, designer for the PWA:

“On mobile you have the additional problem of crafting a UI that is platform agnostic and not confusing” and “PWA is largely unchartered territory in design, and a real opportunity for creative problem solvers to stretch themselves to define a new standard.”

THE RESULTS

  • the Trivago mobile website is available in 33 languages, across 55 countries,
  • more than 500 000 people added a Trivago shortcut to their home screen and their engagement increased by 150%,
  • compared to previous mobile websites, Progressive Web App attracted far more users. Before PWA, only 0,8 repeat visits were recorded, now this number increased to an average of 2,
  • push notifications turned out to be a perfect means of communication – they helped to increase conversion – the number of clicks in the PWA on hotel offers increased by 97% .

You can find a full case study here.

TWITTER

Twitter is a social media platform, where people post short messages called tweets. Twitter was created in March 2006. Now it has more than 335 million active users (July 2018).

PROBLEM

Twitter noticed that users had to overcome many obstacles while using their mobile website.

Some of them were on slow mobile networks​ and ​had little space on mobile devices storage.​ As a result, visitors were reluctant to spend time on Twitter’s website or engage in posting and commenting more. Twitter wanted to find an attractive alternative for people who don’t use their native app or don’t have enough space for downloading this.

SOLUTION

Twitter decided to build a Progressive Web App​ because it seemed to be the best​ combination of a modern website and native features. Instant loading, lower data consumption and large accessibility were features that Twitter was looking for.

RESULTS

The outcomes turned out to be very impressive – the numbers speak for themselves:

  • 20% drop in bounce rate,
  • 65% rise in pages per session,
  • 75% rise in Tweets sent.

As in previous success stories, the “add to home screen​” prompt and ​push notifications increased the user’s engagement significantly. As it is reported in ​thi​s Case Study,​ Twitter noticed that 250 000unique daily users run Twitter Lite from the​ home screen 4 times a day on average. What’s more, they’re sending more than 10M push notifications per day.​

According to Twitter intentions, the PWA takes much less space​ (only 600 KB) than the​ native Android app (23,5 MB), so there’s a bigger possibility that people will have enough space in their internal storage to save it.

What’s more, Twitter added a data saver mode​, that helps users to control the amount of​ mobile data used. Thanks to this option, you can choose which images or videos you want to fully load, and which may remain just as a preview.

You can read a full case study her​e.​

Did we convince you to create a Progressive Web App? What do you think about them? Are they the future of mobile web development? Let us know in the comments below.

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