Android Instant Apps — New On Boarding Experience
Android Instant Apps were announced at Google I/O 2016 and runs on Lollipop and above. Since then many organizations including Vimeo, New York Times’ Crossword have created their instant app module.
Some of the first games to utilize Google Play Instant include Clash Royale and Words with friends 2.
What are Instant Apps?
Instant Apps are native Android Apps that require no installation! Yes, they don’t require installation!
Google play store provides a new button 'Try it now' for instant apps.
Case Study: Jet
Jet is an app which helps to shop faster and cheaper. Jet is one of the companies who initially started with instant app platform.
They also integrated Google Payments API.
Since launching, Jet has seen a 27% increase in their conversion rate in their instant app.
How Instant App Works?
Native application is actually a single feature module. To create an instant app we modularize the native app into different features. These features can be launched without even installing the application.
Every feature can be mapped with a URL that must be hosted somewhere. Using this URL, feature can be launched without even installing the application. Thus greatly reducing install friction.
It’s a great way to give users an on boarding experience of the application without letting user make much hassle with downloading.
Why we need Instant Apps?
When we share hotel details or carpool summary to someone, it asks the other user to install app to access the content and hence there is a great chance user won’t install app just for once. Ultimately the company/developer loose a user who could have on boarded.
Instant App plays a significant role here! Opening the URL will launch an instant app feature which looks exactly like a native app and even works exactly the same. So the user gets same experience of native. This helps in improving UX(User Experience) and it has been seen such UX of instant apps has made users come back and download the app.
Take aways?
- For all those who think progressive web apps are going to replace native ones! You got something beautiful here
- Modularization of your native app into different feature modules not only create instant app features but also reduce the size of application.
- Using without installation, isn’t pretty cool?
