A site that keeps working when the signal goes.

Most sites work in a simple way. The phone asks the server for a page, the server sends it, and the phone shows it. Every time, for every page. While the signal is good, nobody notices. When there is no signal, the screen stays blank with a message saying there is no internet connection, often at exactly the moment someone needed an address, a Wi-Fi password or a phone number.

Why it matters to a small business.

A visitor who sees an error does not wait and try again later. They close the page and call someone else, or they call you at midnight to ask what was already written on the site. In Dalmatia the signal fades in familiar places: in stone houses and cellars, in coves, on ferries and at the border, when a guest switches off roaming. Those are exactly the places where your guests and customers are.

A copy that stays on the phone.

The sites I build have a small helper that lives in the visitor's browser. Its technical name is a service worker, and its job is simple. The first time someone opens the site, while there is a signal, the helper saves a copy of what the site needs onto the phone: the text, the layout, the fonts and the pictures. The visitor installs nothing and approves nothing.

After that the helper does the same thing every time the site is opened. If there is a signal, it asks the server for the newest version and refreshes the copy on the way. If there is no signal, it shows the saved copy instead of an error. The visitor does not need to know any of this. The site simply opens.

The order is deliberate. While there is a network, the site always asks the server first and the copy second. That way nobody gets an old price or old opening hours just because an older copy was left on their phone. The copy is a reserve for the moment without a signal, not a replacement for the fresh site.

The condition I always write down.

Working without a signal has one condition, and I write it next to every promise: the site must be opened once with a signal. Before the first visit there is nothing saved on the phone, so there is nothing to show. Someone who opens the link for the very first time with no signal gets nothing. No site can get around that, so be careful with promises that say otherwise.

That is why I suggest hosts send the guide to a guest before arrival, with a short note to open it once while on Wi-Fi. That one tap is worth more later than any explanation.

The second limit is what the site does not keep itself. A map from someone else's server, a video from another platform and links to other people's sites still need a network. So do calls and messages. But the text, addresses and directions on the saved pages open without one.

Where it pays off most.

• A guest guide. The guest opens it at home before the trip, and later, on the road or at the border with roaming off, still sees the directions to the property, the host's number and how to get in. There is more in the article on the guest guide.
• A konoba or restaurant. A guest who opened the site while looking for somewhere to eat still sees the menu and the allergens at a table in a stone cellar.
• Taxi and transfers. A passenger who opened the site at the hotel still sees the number and the instructions when stepping off a ferry or a plane with roaming off.
• A tradesperson on site. A customer who saved your site to their home screen opens it even in the basement of the house you are renovating, with your list of services and your number.

Installing it on the home screen.

The other half of the same story is installation. The site can be saved to the phone's home screen, with your icon and your name, and it then opens like an app: full screen, without the browser's address bar. No App Store, no Google Play, no waiting for approval and no separate build for each system. On a computer it installs the same way and opens in its own window.

On Android the browser usually offers to install it by itself. On an iPhone you tap the Share button and choose Add to Home Screen. On sorich.hr, when your browser allows it, the Install as an app button sits in the menu on your phone, so you can try it right now, on this page.

An installed site is still the same site. When I publish a change, a new price or new opening hours, the installed version picks it up the next time it is opened with a signal, with no update from an app store. That is why most small businesses do not need a separate mobile app. How a site opens quickly in the first place is covered in the article on speed.

On sorich.hr you can see it without any explanation. When the phone loses the network, a label appears on the page: “No signal. The page is working from your phone's memory.”