What is PWA and How It Increases Customer Engagement and Conversions [real-life examples]

In 2018, 52.2% of all website traffic worldwide was generated through mobile phones, reports Statista. It means that mobile-first thinking is essential for your business to satisfy users. Moreover, according to Google, over half of the consumers will abandon a website after just 3 seconds of loading. So speed should be #1 priority to save a large part of traffic and as a result, customers.

A lot of companies have built mobile applications for better engagement with consumers and providing them with more efficient user experience. But mobile apps weight quite a lot, so user have to think twice before filling precious space on the mobile phone with your app.

Fortunately, there is a new emerging technology that combines the best from both web and mobile — progressive web applications (PWA).

What is a progressive web app (PWA)?

A progressive web app (PWA) is a ‘website’ that can be opened from the home screen of a smartphone and feel like a native application. So what makes PWA so cool and why you as a business owner or marketer should consider using it?

PWA features:

• Progressive — Work for everyone, despite the browser choice and operating system.
• Reliable — Load instantly and even when you are offline.
• Fast — Respond immediately to interactions without brakes and twitching.
• Engaging — Has a pleasant user experience and feels like a native application.
• Responsive — Like any typical website.
• App-like — With the help of app-shell, there is a navigation bar that provides app-like experience.
• Fresh — Service workers consistently update the data to make sure that when you open an app it is up-to-date.
• Safe — PWA has to be served through HTTPS protocol only to provide data security.
• Discoverable — They are searchable through search engines like normal websites.
• Installable — When a user visits a progressive website, there is a prompt to install it to the home screen in a second, without visiting an app store.
• Linkable — PWA can be shared via the link and easily installed in a second.
• Re-engageable — Progressive web applications have push notifications feature that increases users return rate.

PWA case studies

Here are real-life examples of PWA implementation and its business effect:

Media industry:

• Voot: session time per user increased by 39% and daily views per user by 15%.
• Mynet: mobile web experience speeds up by 4X and revenue increases by 25%.
• The Washington Post: number of returning users from mobile search increases by 23%.

Real Estate:

• Housing.com: conversions and lowers bounce rate increased by 40% with new PWA.
• Suumo: 75% decrease in load time, 31% open rate from web push notifications.

Ecommerce:

• George.com: 3.8 times faster average page load time, 2 times lower bounce rate, 31% increase in conversion rate.
• Jumia: 33% increase in conversion rate and 12X more users.
• Lancôme: 17% increase in conversions and 8% increase in conversion rates on recovered carts via push notifications.

Do you want such results? We at Elligense can consult you on how PWA can be implemented in your business and costs of development. Contact us here.

Conclusion

Progressive web applications help you create fast and lightweight application-like experiences, which increases mobile traffic, engagement and conversion rate.

As Gartner’s researcher Jason Wong said, PWA’s will be a usual thing like a responsive design is. So you better use it now, before competitors catch up.