Progressive Web Apps are mobile web apps that run in the browser and don't require installation. When a user opens your website, they can see the actual application interface.

Content

PWA Implementation in e-Commerce

Lancôme is a French luxury perfumes and cosmetics brand.

In 2016, Lancôme saw mobile traffic surpass desktop traffic. Nevertheless, the rate of converting Carts to purchases on mobile devices was 2.5 times lower: 15% against 38% on desktop. It turned out that smartphone and tablet users had problems with purchasing products and used to abandon their shopping carts.

The native application did not cope with problem:only customers who visited the Lancôme e-store regularly were interested in installing it.

PWA technology has allowed Lancôme to create an application providing an immersive experience of making purchases.

After the updates, time until the page is interactive fell by 84%, with a corresponding 15% decrease in bounce rates. There was a corresponding mobile sessions length rise by more than 50%, and conversions increase by 17%.

iPhone users are extremely important for Lancôme, as they make 65% of their mobile audience. The PWA implementation was followed by a 53% increase in session length and 10% bounce rate decrease even though iOS did not support many PWA functions at the time of Lancôme PWA development.

On Android devices (which support push-notifications), Lancôme also took advantage of interactive re-engagement technologies, and managed to increase the conversion rates on abandoned carts.

PWA Use in Mass Media

Forbes is a global media company, focusing on investing, management, entrepreneurship, and technologies.

By the beginning of 2017, the Forbes mobile website was the weak point of the edition. The website was hard to read due to the abundance of pop-up and video ads. The average page loading time was about 6.5 seconds. Even a single ad could be split into several pages and users had to click on additional links to see all the information. Many users used to give up on the very first article they opened, let alone opening links to other articles.

In January 2017, Forbes implemented an extensive website update and developed a PWA version for mobile users. The site and the app worked in parallel, providing mobile users with similar content. This allowed Forbes to compare the actual PWA efficiency.

Forbes removed ads and unnecessary transitions from the app, thus facilitating the web-page navigation and reading. As a result, Forbes PWA allowed cutting down the average amount of time it takes to render content to 2.5 seconds from 6.5 seconds, whereas the average size of its web-pages decreased from 2 megabytes to 300 kilobytes. The PWA users spend up to 40 percent more time per session and view 15 percent more pages per session. There also was a 20 percent decrease in the number of users who read less than one-fourth of an article.

PWA Opportunities for Services

Uber is an application for choosing and ordering taxi rides, private drivers and food delivery. It is available in dozens of countries.

Uber started as a mobile application. But as it entered new markets, including developing countries, the service faced certain difficulties. New users had problems with the mobile app download. Due to a slow Internet connection, users couldn't request a ride on short notice.

Uber has developed a single-page PWA with a super-lightweight core of only 50 kB. It loads on a mobile device in mere seconds even on 2G networks, looks like a standard native application and runs smoothly even on inexpensive and slow devices.

50 Кбайт

Uber app weigh after the PWA implementation

PWA Use in the Entertaiment Sector

Pinterest is "the world's catalog of ideas" and a social network where users collect creative ideas for their work and hobbies by picking up pictures, GIFs and videos.

The mobile users were important for Pinterest, but they wouldn't have used a heavy and slow website. Only 1% of Pinterest users have agreed to log in on the website via a mobile device, browse pages for a long time or download a mobile application.

Sometimes it took up to 23 seconds for the page to load and become interactive.

Native apps weighed 9.6 MB for Android and 56 MB for iOS.

Pinterest переработал свой мобильный сайт и разработал PWA с загружаемым ядром весом в 150 Кбайт. Время до интерактивности снизилось в 4 раза — до 5,6 сек., а при повторных посещениях — до 3,9 сек. Время до первого значимого отображения уменьшилось в 2,3 раза — до 1,8 сек.

Впоследствии в PWA Pinterest появилась поддержка push-уведомлений, улучшилось юзабилити для неавторизованных пользователей.