Suumo

Suumo site

Summary

Japan's top real estate site supercharges new listings with web Push Notifications and sees a 31% open rate for notifications.

Results

  • 75% decrease in load time
  • 31% open rate from web Push Notifications

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About Suumo

SUUMO is Japan’s top real estate site, serving nearly 11% of the country’s population. Fourteen million unique users, many on smartphones, search for new homes on SUUMO every month.

Challenge

More and more users rely on search engines to stay on top of the ever-increasing number of housing listings online. This means SUUMO saw a lot of traffic coming into their mobile website. The company found it difficult, however, to build an engaging experience on the web that was as fast as their mobile app. The resulting high bounce and low retention rates prompted the company to encourage users to download their native app. Actually getting people to download and re-engage with the app, though, was challenging and costly.

Solution

SUUMO looked to Progressive Web App technologies, including offline support and web Push Notifications, to provide a fast, app-like user experience and re-engage their mobile web users. The company added service workers and streamlined the landing page to help consumers quickly find properties they were looking for. The new strategy worked, decreasing the load time on the landing page by 75%.

The real estate site also implemented Push Notifications for mobile web users on Android, to alert them instantly to new property listings. They understood the value of Push Notifications, thanks to their native app experience. The new strategy delivered a 31% open rate.

“We finally have a way to retain users on the mobile web,” says Dai Shibayama, manager of the Smart Device Division, Recruit Sumai Company Ltd., which operates the SUUMO portal site. “This has been a game changer for us!”