A Brief tour into Progressive Web Application

A Brief tour into Progressive Web Application

 Everyone or almost everyone has those. You must somehow stand out from competitors. Your business has to keep in contact with your clients all time, preferably 24/7. And the new Progressive Web App technology will help you to get the desired result. Here, we take a look at its nature, advantages, and drawbacks, as well as prospects for further development and benefits for business.

So let’s start from the definition. PWA (Progressive Web App) makes an app on your website. Form your browser, you can send it to your smartphone, and the PWA will send push notifications as a regular application, and just like it, PWA gets access to the phone’s hardware. It can work with unstable connections and even offline! Great feature, isn’t it? PWA applications are installed from the website; unlike mobile apps, they do not require Play Market or App Store for installation on your phone; instead, it is installed directly from your browser, and this greatly simplifies the release of such a product.

PWA and native apps

1. PWA can be loaded on any gadget through a browser, and its parameters can be any. Besides, your browser will prompt users to install PWA the next time they visit this website.
2. Building a PWA-application is easier and faster than a regular website.
3. No backward compatibility API is required. In the case of PWAs, users get the same code as that of the website (as opposed to desktop apps).

And this is just the beginning. In the future, search engines will pay special attention to PWAs; it is inevitable.

Benefits of PWA apps

Progressiveness here means that an app with certain functions will operate on any gadget, anywhere, besides when a user switches another device or browser, PWA functions can expand depending on the parameters of that second device. Besides, PWA does not require several downloads for each device.

1. Users come to PWA apps following the links on social networks, browsing the web, or directly from the SERP. This is much better than competing with thousands of thousands of apps available on Google Play Store.
2. An offer to install a PWA is shown only when the web app meets certain criteria, and a user has shown interest by revisiting the website.
3. The app is installed instantly. All components requiring a durable download were already installed in the cache when a user first visited the site.
4. PWA apps are smaller compared to mobile apps of the same functions since they use some of the browser resources.
5. Push notifications are sent offline, besides other features of the PWA will operate even if a user has never installed it.
6. Regular apps can be used only on the platform for which they were initially created. You cannot use the app on your computer in the same way as on an Android or iOS device. Besides, only those who installed it can use the application.

As you can see, this solution has a number of advantages. However, we should also mention some disadvantages. Here are the main ones.

Disadvantages of PWA

1. PWA is a relatively new development, so for now, we have not many examples of this format. Those who take the risk will become pioneers.
2. At the time of publication, PWAs are not available in all browsers. As for the most popular browsers, Chrome and Opera, fully support Progressive Web Apps, Firefox, and Microsoft Explorer have some limitations, but Apple has no intentions to support this format, for now.

However, none of these reasons is an obstacle to the development of the PWA format today.

How can PWA help business

Here are the results of some companies applying new technology (data obtained from a Google report).

1. 5miles managed to increase conversions by 30% by reducing its bounce rate by 50% with PWAs.
2. United eXtra Electronics got a 4x increase in visitor returns and a 100% increase in sales from users who come from interactions with toast notifications.
3. Konga uses 92% less data for initial download compared to their native app download.
4. AliExpress managed to push its conversion rate by 104% for new users.
5. The Washington Post has increased the number of visits by 12%. They managed to reduce page load time up to 80 milliseconds with PWA. A great result indeed.

Thus, as practice shows, this technology gives tangible results.

Currently, progressive web apps in the e-commerce segment make not more than 40% of all the apps. This means there is a great option to get more new users from your target audience and make the interaction with them as effective as possible. We can see the beginning of its development, it only starts its long journey in business, but its benefits are obvious, and thus it is very promising. Therefore, those investing in PWA today will remain on the same page with their clients tomorrow and the day after tomorrow. 

Contact our experts; they will be glad to answer all your questions regarding PWA.