Jumia, a leading e-commerce website in Africa, showcased their Progressive Web App (PWA) journey in 2016, outlining how they delivered an app-like experience to users through modern web capabilities. PWA has since proved to be far more than a buzzword—it’s now the de facto way Jumia builds for mobile devices. They’ve integrated PWA across many of their operations, including Jumia Travel.
- 33% higher conversion rate
- 50% lower bounce rate
- 12X more users versus native apps (Android & IOS)
- 5X less data used
- 2X less data to complete first transaction
- 25X less device storage required
Challenges
In Jumia's main market, sub-Saharan Africa, 75% of the mobile connections are on 2G networks. Many users only have intermittent connectivity and visit the site from low-end phones with data limitations. These two factors make it difficult to induce users to download a data-heavy native app, leading to steep drop-off rates and high customer-acquisition costs. “We integrated PWA technologies to reduce friction. They work on most smartphones and tablets without an App Store or Google Play account,” says Paul Midy, Jumia Travel CEO. “You don’t need an email account, or a credit card, either.”
Solution
Jumia Travel has enhanced and optimized all the various elements of their PWA experience. They saw a dramatic 33% increase in conversion rates compared with the previous mobile website. Traffic to their PWA has eclipsed that of their native app by more than 12 times and is still growing. Jumia also saw a 50% bounce-rate decrease.
Plus, Jumia Travel’s PWA uses 80% less data than the native app to complete the first transaction. The PWA consumes 25 times less storage, and is much easier to keep up-to-date. They’ve also built it to work offline-first, which makes a lot of sense given the erratic mobile-network service experienced by many of their users.
Jumia will continue using PWA technologies to reach their evolving base of online shoppers. "Our PWA lets us find some of our highest-value customers,” Midy concludes. “We’ll continue expanding the technology across all our platforms, investing significant resources to maximize the potential scale. We truly believe this is a new way to experience mobile—and we’re just getting started."