PWAs (Progressive Web Apps) are a wonderful way of giving customers an excellent experience that's almost identical to that of a mobile application. At Buddi we decided early on that building our in-store kiosk application as a PWA would be the best path forward for a rapid development experience. It's also much easier to hire developers that can work on the project. The one challenge I experienced with a PWA was our customers didn't really know how to install it properly. When you're thinking of an app your mind automatically defaults to an app that would be available in the Play Store or Apple Store, and this is exactly what a lot of our clients thought when our sales team told them about the product.

On average we would get 3-4 emails a week asking how to install the application. Originally we created a quick PDF doc we would share with clients that helped reduce this. The problem with the PDF was that when other staff members attempted to install the application they didn't have that document handy.

My solution only took me a couple of hours. I simply created 2 installation videos, one for iOS and one for Android. I then added these to the retail application login screen so that clients could access the instructions immediately, in the most relevant place. Which has virtually eliminated the question 'how do I install this as an app?'.

Here's the video I made for iOS:

If you want to check out the login page for yourself here it is: retail.buddi.io