Delivering App-like experience for your Mobile Web user

Authored by Ameex Technologies on 03 Sep 2019

With an increased focus on user loyalty and hyper-personalization, mobile matured organizations are rapidly adopting newer technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, VR/AR, Gamification, Blockchain and more… to grow their business and beat their competition. While innovation helps organizations differentiate and stay ahead of their competitors, some brands including large retailers are still lagging behind when it comes to delivering frictionless experiences across channels/devices.

Transformative mobile-app experiences. But what about the mobile web?

Brands want their customers to use a mobile app because it allows them to

Gather valuable data
Personalize experiences
Develop lasting relationships with customers and more…

"Consumer app fatigue is forcing application leaders to re-evaluate their approach to mobile web versus apps"
- Gartner

Web and mobile sites are sometimes created with a single objective of motivating customers to download their apps and they don’t necessarily provide the same experience that is delivered through mobile apps.

The problem is not all customers want to download an app. They expect brands to deliver the same experience while accessing the brand’s mobile site as well.

Closing the gap between mobile web and app experiences

Businesses must re-evaluate their application strategy and factor in mobile web experience as part of their overall mobile development strategy. Application leaders are fast implementing Progressive Web APPs (PWAs) which helps in blurring the lines between mobile web and app experiences to improve mobile web performance and engagement.

With Google, Microsoft, Samsung and others focusing on advanced PWA technologies, it’s only a matter of time before PWAs becomes the new norm, just like how ‘Responsive Design’ has become a standard for web experience.

Benefits of Progressive Web Apps (PWAs)

PWAs helps overcome the limitations of the web – performance, push notifications and offline modes – and provide frictionless, app-like experiences on the mobile web.

"Gartner Predicts that by 2020 PWA will replace 50% of consumer-facing apps."

PWAs are great for SEO: PWAs improve page performance and a page that loads faster is always ranked higher by search engines.

Lowers Development & Maintenance Costs: PWAs can be implemented with a single codebase so that results in reduced costs involved with development and maintenance

Better Security - Web service workers invoked through PWAs are restricted to only executing on local development environments and SSL/HTTPS hosts. Modern browsers also restrict cross-origin requests. These features, by themselves, increase security.

Quicker Installation: They are much smaller (<1MB) compared to a typical android app (22MB).

Increased Reach - Since PWAs are web-based, it allows for better customer adoption and a higher range of visibility than native apps. PWA’s natural distribution and SEO capabilities further increase this reach.

Better Engagement: Mimics a mobile app in easy navigation, timely push notifications. Cross-browser compatibility leads to increase in engagement.

Higher Conversion Rates – Seamless experience coupled with fast performance is helping brands significantly increase conversions.

PWA Adoption

Given its many benefits, it's no wonder that PWAs are quickly becoming fan favourites around the world. It also comes at a time when the current native app market is oversaturated, and mobile use is through the roof.

"Alibaba saw a 76% increase in total conversions across browsers after implementing PWA"

The below info-graph represents the business outcomes gained by a few global brands after implementing PWA