Not sure if it helps, but if I was in your situation I’d provide a few app updates with a screen to train users on how to install the PWA version and gracefully run away from these problems. Maybe also provide a some sort of a form to get some feedback over the difficulties encountered by users to get there.
Good luck!
The problem is that many of my users are temporary. For example, I have an app for the public transit system for a resort town in Colorado. The town has a decent, albeit small bus system. They technically have an app from their vendor, although it is not very good and is difficult to find. If you search for "$town_name transit app", it won't show up anywhere, where as my app does. And I think my app is much more user friendly. I wrote it because I visit this area a lot and hated the vendor app.
My users are visiting this town for a few days, and are most likely going to open the app/play store and search for an app, use it for a few days, then leave the town and forget about it. The least amount of friction I can provide the better. My only goal is to support public transit and make it a smoother experience.
Do people really search for entirely temporary/short-term/single-use use apps, like for a resort town's transit or a restaurant? For me it's a last resort thing, if there's no website or it's unusable.
Yes. I spent a week in Rome last month (first time visit) and ended up downloading four different apps for public transport and city guides, all
of which were useful. This is on top of Google Maps, Trip Advisor and everything else.
> Or do you think places are making apps that no one uses?
Of course, because apps are "modern". You've never seen an app that should have been a website? I know of multiple places that had shitty apps built for extremely narrow use cases that had close to zero use outside of the team that ordered it (while it was meant for a wider audience).
And yes, I'm genuinely baffled people will bother downloading an app for a very limited use, like the transit of a place they'll visit once for a few days at most (especially considering there's Google/Apple Maps, Citymapper Transit; unless you can buy tickets through the app it's a waste on top of a waste). Has it been ingrained to such an extent that phone == app? Or is that an iOS thing, or maybe an American thing?
What makes you think that companies continue to build and support apps that no one uses? Maybe they have more insight about their usage then a random person on HN?
All the apps mentioned in that page are ones that are used regularly. You can surely appreciate Tinder and Spotify are wildly different than a random resort town's transit times app? In the same way that there are useless apps nobody uses, there are many that are used for hours daily.
I got Citymapper, and that was the end of me looking for transit apps when going abroad. But true, these days the built-in map apps in all platforms are also decent at dealing with public transport options.
