The Client
MariDeal.mu offers travel, and leisure deals for locals, and residents in Mauritius. It is the first portal of its kind in the region. MariDeal provides geo-based real-time recommendations on the best deals and offers.
Being the No.1 last-minute deals portal in Mauritius, they endeavor to help local businesses grow by connecting them to thousands of new customers.
The Mauritian members get the opportunity to search, save and enjoy the best local experiences at unmatched prices.
The Challenge
MariDeal was facing a lot of challenges in scaling up and bringing traffic onboard. Among the most significant pain points were –
- Most of the sales were happening through the desktop since it contributed to nearly 60% of the total traffic. Mobile conversions needed a push.
- Although their website was accessible on mobile, the page response was very slow. Due to a second of delay in page response, the conversion rate had dropped by as much as 40%.
- Their website and mobile apps were not accessible to users in the low network areas.
Solution
Based on our initial finding, we discovered that in order to create a buzz around the platform, it required building a simplistic experience for MariDeal’s mobile users.
This culminated into building a Progressive Web App (PWA) which better suited their needs. Features like push notifications, offline mode, and home screen shortcuts were easily implementable with a PWA. Running a PWA was also easier on a standard browser.
The following factors finally worked in favor of implementing a PWA.
- Reliability — Even on a slow internet connection, PWAs could work easily.
- Speed — Instant loading to quick response, PWAs functioned no less than native apps.
- Engagement — PWAs were capable of delivering an immersive experience. Full screen capabilities, easy access (thanks to “Add to Home Screen” option), and push notification features – all these could serve as great engagement tools.
- Conversion — Greater reliability, speed, and customer engagement play an important role in improving conversions. When customers find your app (or website, for that matter) hassle-free and worthy of their time, they are bound to visit again.
PWA
“Responsive, connectivity-independent, app-like, fresh, safe, discoverable, re-engageable, installable, linkable web experiences.”
Progressive web apps are a single page applications that have been progressively enhanced with features that bring about a more immersive, native app like experience. In other words, A PWA had everything that MariDeal needed.
One of the main reasons behind the popularity of PWAs was their ability to perform equally well across devices and platforms.
The Architecture
Frontend
Execution
The subsequent weeks went in achieving the task for MariDeal. Soon, a PWA was ready. We now wanted to see the results we were waiting for after PWA implementation.
No wonder, the results were to our expectations. We noticed the following improvements.
Result
- 40% improvement in mobile conversion rates: There was nearly 40% surge in mobile conversions. Not only did it help improving organic scores for the platform, but it also made the checkout process simpler for MariDeal customers. They were now able make faster transactions. This led to more conversions.
- Reduced Bounce rate: Before PWA implementation, MariDeal had a high bounce rate of 60%. This was due to slow performance and caching issues on the mobile site. PWA transition brought down the bounce rate from 60% to 45% in 3 months flat.
- Increase in customer engagement: Customer sessions, and goal completions including account creation, add to cart, etc. saw improvement too.