Initial load on a slow mobile connection is agonizing (Slow 3G can easily take 20 seconds) — the agony is probably enhanced by the blank screen (at least the app has the progress bar, but it’s tiny). Android PWAs have a splash screen with the logo which might help reduce agony? but everyone else gets the blank screen. I wonder if the splash screen makes it feel slightly less painful to wait (and reduces the desire to escape)? It’s static, so maybe not.
Related UX research: Progress Indicators Make a Slow System Less Insufferable
Previous (unresolved) Meta discussion on the blank initial load: Show a loader starting page for slow connections?
So the second piece is, when I’m experiencing agony in the app — help me easily escape it. Ideally we should show a button to go back to the site list somewhere, at least during initial load. The swipe is nice to have, and it’s cool that it follows the animations within the app properly… but I didn’t know it was there (I’ve tried the back swipe before though!).