Why PWA drives business for SMBs

Last month, the Local Search Association featured an article that highlighted that 74% of digital media time is now spent on mobile. An even more telling statistic from the recent presentation by Comscore and PlaceIQ is that 59% of that time was spent in mobile apps. 

Mobile is growing at a steady pace, and the demands for apps is growing alongside with it. And while big players have entire teams dedicated to developing apps, SMBs are left behind with the decision to remain browser-only, or make the costly investment and developing a native app for one or several operating systems.

But SMBs don’t have to miss out on the app-driven trend, and the development and adoption of progressive web apps (PWA) is leading the way. We’ve previously discussed progressive web apps on the Mono blog, and we’re excited to share that it is now available on the Mono Platform.

Three ways to leverage PWA for SMBs

As digital service providers begin enabling PWA for SMBs, we have identified just some of the ways SMBs can leverage this dynamic new feature below (apart from offering a better mobile user experience!):

1. Affordable mobile presence

PWAs give SMBs an affordable alternative to offering a fully native app to their customers. With more than 50% of global search queries now coming from mobile devices and Google focused on indexing mobile-friendly websites, the entire world is going mobile-first. PWA can help SMBs drive more mobile traffic with statistics from AppInstitute (2017) noting an average increase of more than 68% in mobile traffic from PWAs. And for end users, PWAs also provide a variety of benefits, including use cases documenting 70% less data usage (1) , 24x less storage (2), and drastically faster load times (3).

2. Branding awareness booster

 With native apps from big brands dominating the home screen, PWAs empower SMBs to add their logo as an icon on the users’ home screen, which helps secure visibility for their brand and boost top-of-mind awareness for consumers. Additionally, PWA enables a dedicated branded splash screen and a full screen experience with an average 78.25% longer user sessions (4), meaning that SMBs can expect much more engagement from their customers when using PWA.

3. Automatic content updates

The use of PWAs is ideal for SMBs that need to ensure that their customers or potential customers can easily access the latest updates to their products or service offering. This could for example be a restaurant with a menu that changes weekly, a fitness studio that has a rotating class schedule or an art gallery that regularly hosts events, such as workshops or openings. Many SMBs rely on creating great online content to drive visitor engagement, and it seems to be working - with 51% of smartphone users purchasing from a company/brand, other than the one they intended to, because their content was useful (5). Even more impressing is that statistics from AppInstitute (2017) show that with PWAs, visitor engagement increases on average of a staggering 137%!

What about conversion-driven features?

As with any new technology, PWAs are still a new way for SMBs to interact and market their offerings to customers, and the development and implementation of new features will rely heavily on user feedback. But as we look to the future, PWAs can offer a wealth of opportunity for mobile-driven conversions for SMBs. Progressive web apps see an average 52% increase in conversions (AppInstitute, 2017) so there is great potential for SMBs to take advantage of this too. 

Mono currently offers PWA free of charge - giving our partners the freedom to offer PWA as part of their standard website offering or as a standalone value-adding product. As SMB adoption of PWAs grows, Mono is already exploring the development of more advanced and conversion-driven options. SMBs will, without a doubt, rely on their digital service providers for guidance on whether PWA makes sense for their business and how they can leverage the value of this new and evolving technology to grow their business. For more information, please reach out to your Partner Success Manager or contact us at sales@monosolutions.com for a demo of PWA on the Mono Platform.

Sources: 1. Google, 2017, 2. AppInstitute, 2017, 3. Google, 2017, 4. AppInstitute, 2017, 5.Google, 2015