How PWAs Empower Retailers to Exceed Customer Expectations

If you can blink twice before a retail website or app loads, it’s likely that brand is losing potential customers in those seemingly fleeting moments. According to Google data, mobile page speeds take an average of 15 seconds to load. That number could have serious consequences when you consider that Akamai’s The State of Online Retail Performance study found 53 percent of mobile site visitors leave a page if it takes longer than three seconds to load.

For retailers, a one-second delay in mobile load times can impact conversion rates by up to 20 percent. The longer the load time, the higher the bounce rate, and the less time a shopper will spend on a retailer’s website and/or app. This means retailers are losing the opportunity to expose shoppers to more merchandise and ultimately convert those visitors into buyers.

In short: latency kills conversion.

Retailers Turn to PWAs to Meet Consumer Demands

With speed serving as a critical factor for success, it’s no surprise that leading retailers like  Starbucks, Walmart, and West Elm are using progressive web applications (PWAs) to deliver seamless user experiences.

PWAs are responsive websites that deliver a website and mobile-app like experience, combining the best of both. With PWAs, retailers can create a single digital property that takes full advantage of most modern device and browser types, eliminating the need to build and manage separate websites and mobile apps.

PWAs are mostly single-page applications, meaning users don’t need to initiate time-consuming full-page refreshes to view more content. After the first visit to a PWA, the application loads instantaneously on return visits. The user experiences instant gratification and the app requires significantly less bandwidth to load smaller bits of requested data.

Reimagining Digital Retail With PWAs

PWAs are helping to transform retail brands around the world. Flipkart, India’s largest e-commerce site, experienced a 70 percent increase in conversions when it transitioned to a PWA. Additionally, Flipkart's PWA tripled the time visitors spent on its site — from 70 seconds to more than three minutes — while reducing data usage to three times less than the legacy native app.

Similarly, U.K. clothier George.com created a PWA that allowed consumers to receive push notifications, add the site to their home screen for a native-like experience, and access pages offline. As a result, George.com pages load 3.8 times faster, the retailer receives 20 percent more page views per visit, with a 31 percent increase in mobile conversions. George.com also saw an increase of 28 percent in time spent on its site after consumers could add it to their home screens.

PWAs can help convert potential shoppers into repeat buyers by supporting faster page loads and seamless integration of web app features.

Transforming the Retail Experience With PWAs

With PWAs, retailers can unlock a number of advanced features and capabilities to meet the evolving needs of today’s omnichannel shoppers, including:

1. Offer consistent and responsive experiences. PWAs load like typical websites but with several advanced capabilities of native mobile apps, such as geolocation and the ability to work offline and enable push notifications.
2. Sidestep device app stores. Companies will sometimes spend as much or more money on marketing their native apps to rank higher in a platform’s app store. Fortunately, PWAs rely on the discovery and distribution model of the web. Therefore, as long as a PWA adheres to modern SEO practices, it will be discoverable on the web. Furthermore, rather than go through a lengthy and opaque app approval process, any updates are instantly made available to users.
3. Simplify development and reduce spend. PWAs only require one code base to deliver a consistent experience across devices and browsers. This minimizes product strategy, design, development and maintenance costs, while also enabling faster deployment of new features and bug fixes.
4. Evolve to meet the latest technology feature enhancements. Technology is evolving at an unprecedented pace, resulting in the need to frequently rebuild digital experiences to be optimized for new technologies. PWAs are built for change and can eliminate the need to invest in websites and mobile apps that will inevitably require rebuilds.

Across all industries, at least 84 percent of consumers say their experiences with using digital tools and services fall short of expectations, according to Gartner. By embracing PWAs, retailers can shift the paradigm from “disappointing” to “delighting” consumers at every touchpoint. Retailers that harness the power of PWAs will deliver more personal and purposeful digital experiences that meet consumers whenever and wherever they are in their buying journey.

Brian Cardarella has 20 years experience in the software engineering industry. Prior to founding DockYard in 2010, he held roles with the Democratic National Committee, Zendesk, and Rakuten. Today, DockYard helps companies digitally transform their operations with custom software, mobile, and web app development consulting.