The End of the App Store? Study Finds Clear Benefits To Using AMP and PWA, Including Faster Deployment and 50 Percent Lower Total Cost of Ownership Over Native Apps

A new international study commissioned by WP Engine and conducted by Vanson Bourne explores the motives and mobile solutions that enterprise organizations are using today to connect with today’s increasingly mobile-first consumer.

The End of the App Store? @wpengine Study Finds Clear Benefits To Using #AMP and #PWA, Including Faster Deployment and 50 Percent Lower Total Cost of Ownership Over Native Apps

The survey of IT and marketing decision-makers found:

• Less than a third of enterprises would rate their digital experience as superior
• Enterprises aren’t investing enough in their mobile strategies despite growing mobile traffic
• Newer mobile solutions, such as Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) and Progressive Web Apps (PWA), can offer up to half the total cost of ownership of native applications

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The Need For Speed On Mobile Digital Experiences

When it comes to providing world-class digital experiences, less than a third of respondents (29 percent) thought their customers would rate their digital experience as superior. On mobile, a poor design or bad user experience is even more pronounced. With three billion smartphone users in the world, the consequences of not providing a superior digital experience for users have never been greater. Companies risk mass customer exodus and/or millions in lost revenue. A one-second delay in page load speed results in a seven percent conversion loss with an 11 percent drop in page views.

While two seconds is considered the threshold for ecommerce website acceptability, the vast majority (82 percent) said their enterprises have an average website load time on mobile devices of two seconds or more. In fact, 31 percent admitted it takes an average of five seconds or longer for their website to load on mobile devices. Combining both AMP and PWA in many cases will help organizations achieve much faster load times on mobile devices, thus offering a superior mobile experience.

AMP allows organizations to create mobile friendly websites in a straightforward way with an open source library. It gives users a smooth, near instant-load experience. PWA allows users to save an icon to their home screen and, although they’re on a website when using it, it functions like they’re using an app on their mobile device. It offers an app experience without the associated maintenance costs or the need to download one and regularly update the code.

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The End of the App Store?

85 percent of respondents believe that all forward-thinking organizations will implement AMP and PWA within the next year, if they haven’t already. Almost seven in ten (68 percent) think that the use of PWA could mean an end to the App Store. Respondents offered that their development and maintenance for iOS and Android apps averages more than $1 million for two years. As a result, organizations are turning to AMP and PWA mobile solutions, which cost less than half over the same time period.

Clear Preference for eCommerce on Websites versus Apps

A recent study of US smartphone users found that the majority (70 percent) have a clear preference for using company websites over mobile apps when making purchases online. The study, conducted by The Center for Generational Kinetics and commissioned by WP Engine, surveyed over 1,200 US respondents ages 14-59 who currently use a smartphone on a regular basis and was weighted to current US Census data for region, age, and gender.

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The Most Popular Content Management System for a Mobile First Web

In terms of the most popular content management system (CMS) in use with various mobile solutions (including iOS and Android apps, PWA and AMP), WordPress (54 percent) and Adobe Experience Manager (54 percent) are neck-and-neck as leaders, powering more than half of all situations where these mobile solutions are being used.

For those who integrate AMP with WordPress and Adobe, respondents cited strong integrations and ease of use as the main benefits. However, WordPress users also called out site performance improvements, including site loading speed and SEO impact, as main reasons why WordPress works best with AMP. For those using PWAs, more people are building with WordPress because the open source platform is already in their technology stack and it is easier to build on than the proprietary Adobe CMS. And the cost benefits of WordPress, in the form of savings from licensing and thousands of free plugins, allows for budget efficiency and increased spend for new innovations.

“Consumers today aren’t just mobile first, they’re mobile only. Enterprise organizations are falling behind in terms of their ability to provide better, faster mobile experiences, putting themselves at great risk of losing customers and revenue,” said Mary Ellen Dugan, Chief Marketing Officer at WP Engine. “When you factor in the real cost savings and performance increases realized by using AMP and PWA on WordPress, the results speak for themselves. The increased use of these two mobile technologies is resulting in much better mobile experiences at less than half the cost of apps and providing demonstrable benefits to consumers and an enterprise’s bottom line.”