The Secret to Higher Mobile Ad Conversions: PWAs

Jillian MacNulty Picture

by Jillian MacNulty | Last Updated: May 9, 2018

Mobile ad spend is rapidly increasing–with predictions of spend increasing to $156 billion by 2019. With more and more consumers clicking on your ads from mobile devices, it’s incredibly important that your landing pages are not only mobile-ready, but mobile-first. Enter: Progressive Web Apps (PWAs). If you haven’t heard the buzz around them, here’s a quick 60-second video to get you up to speed. They’re the next generation of mobile, giving users an app-like mobile experience, without asking them to download anything from the app store since they’re hosted on the web. The use cases for PWAs are endless, and perhaps one of the most compelling is using them as landing pages for your mobile ads. Here are a few ways in which PWAs will help you achieve maximum conversions in your mobile ad campaigns: Make It Mobile First This isn’t breaking news: consumers today are on mobile more than ever. Which means they’re clicking on your ads on mobile just as much (if not more) as they are on desktop. So where are they landing when they tap on your mobile ad? At the bare minimum, you must provide a version of your landing page that is optimized for mobile. Adobe reported last year that companies with mobile-optimized sites were far more likely to increase mobile conversions, in most cases up to more than five percent! This might seem like a no-brainer, but nearly half of companies don’t direct their mobile ad traffic to mobile-optimized sites. The result of this? High bounces, low conversions, and a lot of wasted ad spend. Some good news: PWAs are your fix. Thanks to some strict standards set by Google, PWAs are always optimized for mobile, and they’re lightning fast–helping marketers retain valuable click throughs and see some real conversions. Just ask Lancôme–the luxury cosmetics brand that saw a 17 percent increase in conversions when they launched their PWA. Personalization Is Key Imagine this scenario: you’re browsing your Instagram feed–maybe under the table during a meeting (we won’t judge). An ad for a swimsuit from Target catches your eye. You need a new suit for your upcoming vacation, so you click the ad...only to find yourself redirected to the homepage of the Target website. Not only is this a letdown to you, it’s also putting at least three more clicks between you and the bathing suit that caught your eye–and that doesn’t even account for the steps it takes to check out. (Fun Fact: the average consumer abandons a purchase that requires more than six clicks.) No One Will Download Your App Sorry if this is a harsh reality, but if someone clicks on your ad and it leads them to a page that prompts them to download your app to complete the conversion, you’re out of luck. The more friction between the click and the conversion, the less likely the user is to convert. And when you’re prompting someone to download an app, that requires them to leave their browser, head to the app store, input their password, wait for the app to download, open the app (which will most likely not lead them to the information relevant to the ad they clicked on)...you get the picture. Instead of asking them to download an app, how about you provide them with an app-like experience, right on their browser? PWAs can integrate all of the rich functionality of a native mobile app without ever asking them to leave their browser. And, with the ability to install the experience to their homescreen, they can get a truly app-like experience with far less friction, increasing your chances of conversion and keeping them coming back for more. If you want any chance of a conversion, your customer should be landing on a page that is tailored to the consumer’s expectations. Think about the following when determining what should be on that ad landing page: It’s time to meet today’s mobile shoppers with experiences worthy of their tap. With brands spending more on mobile advertising than almost any other medium, it’s imperative that the landing pages we’re putting behind our ads are not only mobile-friendly, but made-for-mobile. And when it comes to providing fast, frictionless mobile experiences, PWAs are the key to real ROI on your mobile ad spend.
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