spa Architekturführer Köln - SPA in the front, ProcessWire in the back

[schwarzdesign]

I wanted to write a bit of an update since this project was so well received last year. The Architekturführer has now been online for about nine months, and we have been getting mostly positive feedback. Thankfully, I was able to resolve all issues with Google's indexing of the page. The site's SEO is actually pretty solid now, being one of the first results when searching for "Architekturführer" (at least from within Cologne).

We have also added some new content and restructured some pages. The homepage, for example, now features only selected projects. An iconic new entry that everyone who's been to Cologne in recent years will recognize is the Rheinboulevard Deutz. There's also an entirely new section for architecture-themed walks (Spaziergänge) that you can take in different areas of the city. If you come to visit for a day, make sure to check those out ?

Finally, we got some traffic through word of mouth and a couple of architecture news sites, the visitor numbers are steadily rising each month. The only thing I find a bit lacking is that the number of PWA installations are very low. It seems the whole PWA concept has not really come through yet, or maybe it's just not that much of an added benefit compard to the normal site. I'm interested to see how PWAs will fare against native apps in the future, once they become more widely adopted.

 

[dragan]

On 2/5/2020 at 11:16 AM, schwarzdesign said:

The only thing I find a bit lacking is that the number of PWA installations are very low

I'm not surprised, actually. Most people have never heard of it, and if they did, were only more confused than before.

btw, how are you tracking PWA installs? With Google Tag Manager or similar?

[schwarzdesign]

@dragan Yeah, that's my experience as well.

We're not using Google Analytics or Tag Manager anymore because of privacy concerns. To comply with the GDPR, we're now mostly using our own Matomo instance. The tracker is configured to not set any cookies, IP adresses are masked et c to yield completely anonymous statics. You can read about our approach here (in German).

Anyway, we have some event tracking set up to track the installs. On Android, we can track both the native dialog as well as the user choice using the beforeinstallprompt event and the userChoice promise. On iOS, there's no PWA install event, so we can only track the popup that informs the visitors about the PWA installation.

I've also set a campaign parameter that should be tracked when the PWA is started from the home screen (https://architekturfuehrer.koeln/manifest.webmanifest), but the amount of campaign reports are almost zero, so either some devices aren't correctly including the parameter, or opening rates are even lower than installations ?

[teppo]

On 2/5/2020 at 12:16 PM, schwarzdesign said:

I'm interested to see how PWAs will fare against native apps in the future, once they become more widely adopted.

Definitely an interesting topic!

We've developed a few PWA's for our clients recently, and I'd say that they've been very well received — but, to be fair, they've been a) services for existing members and b) basically apps that wouldn't work (well) as regular websites, so that option was out of the question. When it comes to native vs. PWA, in our case PWA seems like the obvious choice: easy to use and efficient to maintain, upgrades are effortless, and obviously the web platform is "our thing" (more than native anyway) ?

Some "random" websites (news sites, blogs, etc.) are now offering the option to install, but to me that feels a bit weird: unless it's a service I'm going to use regularly and there's a clear benefit for me in installing it, I don't really see the point. In fact it can also be a little intimidating: why do I need to install this service to use it?

Again I think it boils down to the question of "would it work as a regular website": if the answer is "yes", then perhaps it should just be that ?‍♂️

(Sorry to hijack the thread, by the way!)

[eurekaa]

thanx it is working fine

[schwarzdesign]

Time for another small update! The Architekturführer Köln is now available in the Google Play Store. One of the major problems with the Progressive Web App approach was that people don't really know about it, and they're disappointed when they don't find it in the App Store / Play Store. The new Trusted Web Activities help solve this problem. We used bubblewrap to generate an app package based on the PWA that can be distributed through the Play Store. As a result, you can now find the Architekturführer in the Play Store!

Takeaways:

• The app is really nothing more than a tiny website launcher that opens a Chrome instance without any UI. For the end user, it's barely distinguishable from the PWA when added to the home screen. But being available in the Play Store does help with visibility (and talking to clients).
• The Play Store requires a lot of info, screenshots in specific formats and buttons to be clicked before publishing an app there. Also, every change needs to be manually approved, so it takes a while. Don't start the process the evening before.
• I used appstorescreenshot.com to generate nice looking annotated screenshots for the Play Store page.
• Trusted Web Activities don't exist on iOS, so for now this only works for Android, not in the App Store.