Switching from PWA to mobile. Was it a good move?
by Cosmin BacanuThe answer is a big YES.
Issues / Motivation:
- PWA notifications didn’t work reliably on Android and at all on iOS (until recently)
- Facebook mobile ads open in the Facebook built-in browser and that sucks if you want the user to install your PWA
How is a mobile app a solution:
- Notifications just work on both platforms.
- When the user clicks on an App store / Play store link, the store app automatically opens, breaking out of the Facebook browser. Also, every user knows how to install an app.
Results:
1000+ installs across iOS and Android in the last 20 days (when I started the ads campaign)
2500 ad clicks for ~100E which is worth it for me. ~40% conversion rate.
~200 daily users (more on the weekends), which is more than expected since the app is mostly “one time use”.
~100 of those daily users are subscribed to notifications, which is less than expected, but still a good number
Compared with last year, I had 3000 clicks to the site but most of the users weren’t returning and I didn’t know why, until someone sent me an email telling me that it’s really hard to get back to the site because of the Facebook browser.
Conclusion:
If your main marketing channel is Facebook/Instagram and you want daily recurring users, a mobile app is better than a PWA.
