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Ask HN: Why are PWA user install stats so hard to find?

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Re: Ask HN: Why are PWA user install stats so hard to find?

#21

Post by mkl »

threeseed wrote: post #19
thangngoc89 wrote: post #2

> Apple said PWAs had "very low user adoption" Installing PWA isn't obvious for users on iOS Safari or even macOS Safari. It's very obscure > A Chrome OS ... desktop PWA installs have grow by 270% Google Chrome would "beg" you to install PWA if the web was developed in the correct way with correct manifest and ServiceWorkers.

Open Website. Click Share. Click Add to Home. Doesn't seem that obscure and for me the issue is much more with websites not making it clear when a PWA version of the site is available.

You're not sharing it with anyone, so that does seem pretty obscure.

Re: Ask HN: Why are PWA user install stats so hard to find?

#22

Post by L3viathan »

troupo wrote: post #13

Because PWAs are mostly hype originally aggressively promoted by Google, but now even Google is tired of promoting them. One of the few places where hype is still real is Hacker News, and even here people can't even come up with examples of good PWAs beyond, and I kid you not, Twitter. Going from 1 install to 270 installs is a 270% increase, too. So I would take such stats with a grain of salt weighing about 270 tons…

> Going from 1 install to 270 installs is a 270% increase

No, it's a 270x increase. In percent that's much higher.

Re: Ask HN: Why are PWA user install stats so hard to find?

#23

Post by mkl »

troupo wrote: post #13

Because PWAs are mostly hype originally aggressively promoted by Google, but now even Google is tired of promoting them. One of the few places where hype is still real is Hacker News, and even here people can't even come up with examples of good PWAs beyond, and I kid you not, Twitter. Going from 1 install to 270 installs is a 270% increase, too. So I would take such stats with a grain of salt weighing about 270 tons…

> Going from 1 install to 270 installs is a 270% increase

That's a 26900% increase.

Re: Ask HN: Why are PWA user install stats so hard to find?

#24

Post by troupo »

L3viathan wrote: post #22
troupo wrote: post #13

Because PWAs are mostly hype originally aggressively promoted by Google, but now even Google is tired of promoting them. One of the few places where hype is still real is Hacker News, and even here people can't even come up with examples of good PWAs beyond, and I kid you not, Twitter. Going from 1 install to 270 installs is a 270% increase, too. So I would take such stats with a grain of salt weighing about 270 tons…

> Going from 1 install to 270 installs is a 270% increase No, it's a 270x increase. In percent that's much higher.

Sorry, it was a brain fart on my part.

If we do the 270% increase from 1, the stats become funnier.

Re: Ask HN: Why are PWA user install stats so hard to find?

#25

Post by troupo »

mkl wrote: post #23
troupo wrote: post #13

Because PWAs are mostly hype originally aggressively promoted by Google, but now even Google is tired of promoting them. One of the few places where hype is still real is Hacker News, and even here people can't even come up with examples of good PWAs beyond, and I kid you not, Twitter. Going from 1 install to 270 installs is a 270% increase, too. So I would take such stats with a grain of salt weighing about 270 tons…

> Going from 1 install to 270 installs is a 270% increase That's a 26900% increase.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40960124

Re: Ask HN: Why are PWA user install stats so hard to find?

#26

Post by threeseed »

mkl wrote: post #21
threeseed wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Open Website. Click Share. Click Add to Home. Doesn't seem that obscure and for me the issue is much more with websites not making it clear when a PWA version of the site is available.

You're not sharing it with anyone, so that does seem pretty obscure.

Share section has always meant more than just share with other people.

It includes adding to favourites, publishing the page to other apps etc.

Re: Ask HN: Why are PWA user install stats so hard to find?

#27

Post by USiBqidmOOkAqRb »

threeseed wrote: post #19
thangngoc89 wrote: post #2

> Apple said PWAs had "very low user adoption" Installing PWA isn't obvious for users on iOS Safari or even macOS Safari. It's very obscure > A Chrome OS ... desktop PWA installs have grow by 270% Google Chrome would "beg" you to install PWA if the web was developed in the correct way with correct manifest and ServiceWorkers.

Open Website. Click Share. Click Add to Home. Doesn't seem that obscure and for me the issue is much more with websites not making it clear when a PWA version of the site is available.

Oh, and you omitted that you need to scroll down the share popup. A popup that primes you as scrollable sideways, don't forget.

When my family was discussing getting an older member a smartphone, I briefly thought about it and realized that the whole lore of what's srollable would be impossible to explain. If you don't want a feature used, put it "below the fold" in a popup.

Re: Ask HN: Why are PWA user install stats so hard to find?

#28

Post by oefrha »

mkl wrote: post #21
threeseed wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Open Website. Click Share. Click Add to Home. Doesn't seem that obscure and for me the issue is much more with websites not making it clear when a PWA version of the site is available.

You're not sharing it with anyone, so that does seem pretty obscure.

Share is the button to bring up the menu with myriad actions like bookmarking, adding to reading list, printing, running third party actions, etc. Has been for years. Obvious? Maybe not. Obscure? Also no. There are very few buttons you can click to begin with: it has to be either AA or Share.

Re: Ask HN: Why are PWA user install stats so hard to find?

#29

Post by noduerme »

pletnes wrote: post #3

I work as a developer / consultant. Sometimes I show «install as desktop app» on Edge/chrome on windows and people are genuinely surprised, and don’t know about it. I’d bet the conscious usage is very low. Chrome(OS) and others might use PWAs behind the scenes, so depending on how you count, maybe the numbers are much higher than I’d think?

Company I write code for has an in-house app that's used on tablets by employees on retail floors. It's a platform agnostic PWA. Getting the managers to actually create a home screen shortcut to use it full screen always requires someone to walk them through that. It's just surprising and not intuitive to most people that a page in a web browser can be made to act like a standalone app.

To be clear, it's not really critical. They can do their job perfectly well using the app in any browser. But having it full screen does improve the UX quite a bit.

Re: Ask HN: Why are PWA user install stats so hard to find?

#30

Post by NekkoDroid »

I personally very much enjoy using PWAs for things that are actually more like apps than websites. Things like Discord could benefit from a PWA version, but the ones I actually do use are for standard Fediverse pages, YouTube, Chrome Remote Desktop, Pokemon Showdown and a bunch more.

Sadly I do think that PWAs aren't very popular in the grand scheme of things since I think they often make more sense than a separate app that you download just for it to basically be a copycat of the website and to still not work offline.

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