[s3r3nity]

As someone working in tech, and does digital marketing consulting, there is actually a lot of value in these interstitials: 1) Usually the app is infinitely better than the mobile web experience. You can chalk it up to prioritization of engineering working on iOS / Android app development over a mobile web experience -- usually for good reason. 2) It's a solid retention strategy. You can harp on about bounce rates reducing activation rates (bounce rates aren't as high as you might think btw in certain cases) but at the end of the day, a 1% increase in repeat purchase rate (or insert other retention metric here) will have a much much more significant impact than a 1% increase in activation.

It only works for certain scenarios and cases, but at the end of the day, there's significant data to show that they work.

[_delirium]

One unfortunate thing that imo is increasing the value of app installs (and therefore how much "collateral damage" in bounce rates is worth it) is that companies are starting to use them as a push ad platforms. Once your app's on the phone, you can push notifications whenever you want, not only when the user is actively using the app. While with a mobile website, once they navigate away from the site you can't push ads until the next time they visit.

The Hotwire Android app was the first one I noticed doing this, raising notifications unrelated to actual use of the app (e.g. for bookings). If they have a general promotion, like "fall sale" or something, they push a notification to a targeted subset of users. In their case there isn't even an option in the app settings to opt out of the notification spam. Yelp was the second app I found doing this, but they at least have an opt-out in their settings menu. For apps that don't, you can entirely revoke their notification privileges in the central Android settings, but I doubt the average user knows how to do that.

My dislike for playing whack-a-mole with this kind of nonsense is why I don't install apps anymore (outside a few trusted exceptions, like Wikipedia's app), and just use mobile websites.

[jackmaney]

> 1) Usually the app is infinitely better than the mobile web experience.

Don't give a fuck. If I wanted your shitty app, I would have gone to the Play store and installed it. If I want to go to your website, then I want to fucking go to your website. Don't be a bag of rancid dicks and redirect me.

> 2) It's a solid retention strategy.

[Citation Needed]

[roasm]

I generally agree with these points. We ended up with an interstitial the same way I hope most everyone else did: we A/B tested it, and the results were clearly positive on engagement and purchase.

We could choose to drop the interstitial as a matter of principal or on the assumption that the difficult-to-quantify long-term benefit will pay off later, but we'd have to make that decision not in the absence of data, but actually in opposition to the data.

Or let Google make the decision for us...

[ianphughes]

I am not sure I agree with your first point. It seems the most frequent case is that a user wants to access content right away. Regardless of how much "better" the native experience might be, its a lot of hoops to jump through to fulfill the immediate need.

I certainly can't argue that it does yield positive business results under certain scenarios, but for the average user it seems to injure common web experiences.

[s3r3nity]

Sure -- that makes sense. I find that it depends upon the category or space that the company is in.

For eCommerce, this type of interstitial is a no-brainer: users have an easier time feeling more secure purchasing through an app vs. Safari or some other mobile browser. (Especially if it's Apple Pay enabled!)

For content heavy sites, it might be that the opposite is true: faster access to content can be used to hook the user. If you own one of these sites, you still need to design a method to get the user to come back repeatedly after you post updates. Email subscription modals do a good job at this, but people hate giving their email - especially on mobile.

[ashark]

Considering that even Amazon's iOS app was worse than their site the last time I checked—which is really impressive since their site is terrible—I doubt I'm going to gain anything by installing the app for Bob's House of Air Conditioners or whatever.

[tacticus]

> feeling more secure purchasing through an app

Considering the security of most of the "apps" out there this is really depressing.

[exodust]

> "Usually the app is infinitely better than the mobile web"

Can you provide an example of an app that is infinitely better than its mobile website?

If you can just provide one example, and not any of the tech giants. One example where there's a "mobile web experience" as you put it, and a native app.