An A/B test of beauty brand Paula’s Choice Skincare’s Progressive Web App (PWA) carried out by Mobify has yielded a 40 per cent increase in revenue and a 46 per cent rise in conversion rate for the company. PWAs are modern shopping websites that combine the high-converting features of an app with the wide reach of the web. Mobify recommends this type of A/B testing of PWAs to isolate and measure the site’s capacity to accelerate business, compared with conventional commerce websites.

“For our shoppers, site speed is the first essential ingredient,” explains Annie Lau, senior. director of site optimization & customer acquisition at Paula’s Choice. “Our PWA is really fast and has a mobile-first design that helps make the entire experience feel app-like and immersive so we can serve customers quickly and continuously, especially as they research and shop in the free moments of their daily lives.”

With holiday mobile traffic and transactions continuing to climb and mobile use eclipsing all other devices, the brand was seeking confirmation that the shift to a fast and engaging mobile PWA built on Mobify’s Front-end as a Service platform would make a real difference to the bottom line.

The Paula’s Choice site is quick to load since only the code needed for the current resolution is loaded. Instant navigation between pages is achieved using javascript, rather than waiting for the browser to load. With support for technology known as service workers, the Paula’s site is able to run offline, and be added to a shopper’s homescreen – just like a native app, but without requiring a download. Mobify’s platform also uses a ‘headless commerce’ approach that separates the front-end experience from back-end applications.

In addition to the revenue and conversion rate increases, the Paula’s Choice PWA also drove a 55 per cent increase in product views and a 61 per cent increase in add-to-cart rates. Additionally, in a time-to-task comparison, the Paula’s Choice PWA decreased the time it takes to search for a product and add it to the customer’s shopping cart by 67 per cent.

“By paying careful attention to how we differentiate our brand and how our shoppers interact with our products, Mobify helped us focus our shopping experience on our most valuable asset, our customer,” says Lau.