With over 60% of the world’s population owning a smartphone today, it’s evident that phones are the primary way of online interaction. Whether it’s for entertainment, healthcare, or finance, an app or a website improves accessibility using a device that fits in your hand.
The shift to mobile phones for digital connectivity gained significant momentum in 2001 with the introduction of 3G internet. While initially only a fraction of the world’s population embraced this shift, it wasn’t long before the number skyrocketed to over 30% by 2016. This rapid growth created a domino effect, leading to the introduction of mobile-first indexing and subsequently, the primary topic of today – Progressive Web Apps or PWA.
How is all this related?
Today’s businesses thrive on internet connectivity via traditional web apps. You can easily search for a URL and access food or hotel websites. However, traditional web apps fall short in mobile user experience. They lack offline availability, access to device features, and smartphone compatibility, unlike native apps.
Progressive web app development solves these limitations by creating a balance between traditional apps and native apps. Web application developers design them to be easily accessible and mobile-friendly to offer a more enriching user experience.
What Are Progressive Web Apps?
Progressive web apps (PWAs) blend traditional web and native mobile apps to enhance user experience. Built with HTML, Java, and CSS, PWAs offer faster loading times and push notifications like mobile apps. They bridge the gap between traditional and native apps, delivering efficiency, high performance, and ease of use.
PWAs are platform-independent and accessible via web browsers across all devices. Similar to traditional apps, web app developers use traditional technologies for PWA adaptability. Like native apps, PWAs offer offline availability, home screen installation, and app-like features such as push notifications, animations, and gestures.
Benefits of PWAs For Businesses
Big names like Twitter, Starbucks, Uber and Google have shifted to progressive web apps because of the benefits they bring along. And the list continues to grow over the years.
Working with web app developers offering PWA development services will help your business utilize the following benefits.
Improved Performance And Speed
PWAs are lightweight and therefore offer faster loading time. These apps include features like progressive loading, data compression and caching mechanisms to store essential resources locally for quicker loading. Since they are designed to be lightweight, they can perform even in cases of limited internet connectivity.
Enhanced User Experience For Better Conversions
Progressive web apps offer a native app-like interface to provide the same intuitive experience that people are familiar with. For example, PWAs feature push notifications to alert or remind the user of any new update offering a higher scope to maintain a good relationship with customers. PWAs are responsive, adapting to various screens for smooth user experiences. With faster loading times, offline availability, and home screen installation, PWAs boost engagement and conversions.
Increased Discoverability
As discussed before, Google’s emphasis on mobile experience, evident through mobile-first indexing, prioritizes mobile-friendly websites in search engine results. Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) play a crucial role in this context by offering a reliable, fast, engaging, and safe user experience, making them discoverable and favorably indexed by search engines. Businesses can reach a wider audience, and improve their SERP position, ultimately driving more traffic and engagement to their website.
PWAs are also URL accessible so they offer a wider reach by being accessible even without an app store.
Reduced Development And Maintenance Costs
PWAs are advanced web apps created using existing web assets and frameworks for faster creation. They eliminate the cost of developing and testing different versions by using single codebases for all platforms.
They operate using web servers allowing seamless updates and reducing the hassle of installing updates.
Unlike mobile apps, PWAs do not rely on specific hardware which reduces the cost of maintenance. Most importantly, there is no money and time wasted for app store approvals as PWAs can be simply launched on the web.
Use Cases Of Progressive Web Apps In Multiple Industries
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Ecommerce
Flipkart: The ecommerce giant created Flipkart Lite to tackle the limited internet connectivity in India. The app was created within 45 days and was a success. Flipkart reported 3 times higher time spent, 3 times lower data usage and a 70% higher conversion rate.
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Social Media
Twitter Lite: Twitter launched Twitter Lite which is 70 times smaller in size than the native app but uses 70% less data and loads 30% faster. The PWA resulted in a 20% lower bounce rate and a 65% higher session rate.
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Travel And Hospitality
Make My Trip: The MMT PWA was designed to improve the mobile experience for users. This shift resulted in a 3x conversion rate, 38% lower page load time and a staggering 160% increase in session time.
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Media and Entertainment
Spotify: With Spotify PWA, the company set an industry record of a 46% higher free-to-paid conversion rate. Its visually appealing interface also contributed to a 40% increase in average listening hours/month and 30% higher monthly active users.
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Retail
Adidas: PWA was a success with Adidas. The brand saw “double-digit improvements in direct-to-consumer revenue” with about a 36% increase.
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Ride Sharing
Uber: Uber PWA offers fast loading even with 2G internet. The company reported more ride bookings via the PWA than the native app using only 50kB per ride request.
Getting Started With PWAs
The first step to getting started with PWAs is connecting with expert web application developers. It’s easy to find a web app development company in India to help you go through the creation process. Here’s a brief overview of progressive web app development.
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Choosing a Web Hosting Provider
PWA uses web servers for server storage, security, 24/7 uptime and technical support. All future updates for the PWA can be updated on the server for easier upgrades across all platforms. You can choose from popular web servers like Apache, AWS, Nginx and Google Cloud Platform.
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Creating an HTML File
Since PWAs are essentially websites, they require the use of traditional frameworks to create a front end and back end code for the pages. Once the skeleton with all styling and data fetching elements is ready, it can be deployed to the web server of your choice for testing and launch.
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Creating Web App Manifest
It’s essentially a JSON file that stores the metadata about how your PWA looks. The file includes information like theme color, app name, icon design, etc. This file is added to the HTML file for proper functioning.
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Adding A Service Worker
Service worker plays an essential role in adding elements to PWA that were limited to native apps. Service worker is a Javascript file that quietly runs in the background. It caches and fetches important assets enabling PWA to run with limited connectivity and even offline. It is also responsible for managing push notifications.
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Installation
The app’s performance and metrics can be audited using tools like the RAIL system or Lighthouse. Once everything is optimized and ready, supported browsers will display an ‘install’ prompt, typically represented by a plus icon or an ‘Add to Home Screen’ option. Users can click on this prompt to install and launch the PWA, creating a convenient shortcut for quick access.
Conclusion
Progressive web apps are an indispensable part of any business strategy. They are upgraded versions of traditional web apps that are smaller in size, quicker, more accessible and mobile friendly. Considering the growth in conversions, session times and engagement of most brands who invested in PWA, it’s worth it for any business using online platforms for operations.
If you need an upgrade and wish to utilize the benefits of PWAs, hire web developers at Qualhon to begin the process. It’s a CSM-certified company that specializes in multiple technology stacks to offer bespoke solutions. Schedule a meeting today and find your PWA solution with Qualhon.