Progressive Web Apps: Everything You Need to Know About

The Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) are becoming a trend these days.

I mean if you are following Google’s blog regularly, then you have every 2 or 3 months a blog talking about a brand who has achieved great success after developing a Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) for themselves.

And, the success is measured by-

• Improved performance of the apps
• Increased user engagement
• Faster loading speed even without a good network connection

But,

What are these PWAs?

How are they beneficial?

Why are leading brands looking forward to PWAs?

Why should you think of your own PWA?

Let’s check out all of these in great detail.

What are Progressive Web Apps (PWA)?

To understand it completely, you need to know what exactly the PWAs are.

For a better answer for you, I searched for it on Google, and I found this from Wikipedia-

But, I would rather want to make this simple for you-

A Progressive Web App (PWA) is a web application that gives an app-like experience to its users. And, PWA makes this happen with the use of modern web technologies.

This means PWAs work exactly the same as the Native mobile apps and even you can use it the way you want- either like a PWA or a Native app.

Why Choose Progressive Web Apps (PWAs)?

There are various types of mobile apps available in the app development industry- Hybrid and Native, Android and iOS.

Then, what is the need of PWA and why is it considered to be used?

Let’s check out the reasons why you need a Progressive Web App instead of Native or Hybrid or even Android or iOS mobile apps:

• The purpose behind using PWA instead of any other mobile app is to improve the customer experience by looking at the competition between businesses on various app stores.
• Another important reason is that the PWA allows you to rank higher on the search engines which is not the case with iOS mobile apps.
• Also, PWAs offers an excellent performance compared to other Native mobile apps.

So, if you are looking to target all of these above three hindrances for your business growth, it is the right time to invest in PWA and develop one for your business.

What are the advantages of the Progressive Web Apps (PWAs)?

Before banking upon developing a progressive web app (PWA), you should know each and every benefit that the PWA offers.

Benefits of Progressive Web Apps (PWAs)

1. PWA works on any browser

A Progressive Web App (PWA) works exactly the same as a web application would work. We discussed above that a PWA is a web application developed using modern web technologies to offer an app-like experience.

Hence, a PWA works on any browser the way any web application would. Whether that is on desktop or mobile.

2. PWA is responsive to every device

A Progressive Web App (PWA) is not classified with any type of web apps the way the mobile apps are.

This means that a PWA work amazingly on any device of Android and even on any device of iOS. In fact, they are responsive to the Windows app as well.

And, this benefit of PWA decreases your as well as the development company to develop different mobile apps for the different operating system.

3. It works without the Internet connectivity

One of the strongest benefits of Progressive Web Apps is to display the app content in the offline mode as well.

The users suffering from network breakdowns or the users residing in the areas where the internet connectivity is not stronger enough to load the native apps, that is where these PWAs prove an excellent investment.

So, whether your users are using your app with the Internet connectivity or not, they are sure-shot to remain your loyal customers through PWAs.

4. It is ditto like a normal mobile app

Though it is a web application, the Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) give exactly the same look as you have while using any other Native or Hybrid mobile app.

Everything from the app content, navigation to interactive design functionalities are ditto like a mobile app in a PWA.

So, your app users are neither going to see any difference between a native app or a PWA nor they are going to know that the app they are using is a PWA or a native mobile app.

5. PWAs are highly secure

Just like any other web application, it is important to have PWAs secured from any data breaches.

And, that is what it comes with. A PWA is safe and secured because it is served via HTTPS. This makes PWA even more beneficial and reliable for you as well as for your customers.

6. It is discoverable on the search engines

The competition among the businesses is increasing day by day in each industry. And, more and more businesses are coming up with their own mobile app to stay competitive.

Now, the number of mobile apps have increased to such an extent that it becomes difficult to stand strong on the different app stores, improve the engagement with the customers, and gain more business.

Though you invest in App Store Optimization (ASO), there is no guarantee that you remain on the first fold of the app stores.

In fact, the Apple app store does not allow any business to perform any kind of ASO or rather we could say, your ASO strategies do not work on the Apple App Store.

And, that is not the case with the Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) as they can be crawled and indexed by the search engines making it possible for your PWA to rank well and outplay the competition.

7. It helps to boost the app engagement

What are your plans to improve the engagement ratio of our existing mobile app users?

Almost each and every business has this question in mind after launching the mobile app. Though, this needs to be well-planned even before developing the mobile app.

But, the most promising way to improve the user engagement ratio on your mobile app is to utilize the push notifications.

And, the Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) come up with such features like push notifications that boost the customer engagement ratio with your app.

And, you know that increased customer engagement leads to more business.

8. It has no installation process

Well, to help you understand how to install, here is a quick step by step process by Dockyard.com-

Yes, it’s that pretty simple. That means you don’t have to always specifically go to the app store, find your app, and install it on your phone.

Well, that is the reason it is said that it has no installation process.

9. It can be shared through a link

You just saw that you can have a PWA installed by opening just a website on the mobile browser.

That means you can share a link of a website and a user can have it on his/her phone. That was quite easy and quick.

This is much easy for you save a lot of costs attached to adding your apps in the app store, maintain it, and market it.

Key Features of PWA

After looking at the benefits of PWAs, it becomes imperative to know the core features of Progressive Web Apps (PWAs). Google classified it amazingly-

PWAs are reliable
The PWAs work effectively and efficiently in any network conditions- whether there is no or poor internet connection or a slower internet speed. This makes PWA highly reliable for each and every business, industry, and users.

PWAs loads faster
Businesses are struggling for faster loading speed of the websites and apps while PWAs loads all types of content immediately in any network condition and that too with an amazing experience.

PWAs boosts engagement
The PWAs look and function just like any other Native app in your smartphone. And, everything from the screen icons, UI/UX to push notifications are build to keep your users updated and engaged. Hence, PWAs are a great way to improve customer experience and engagement.

Why Should You Consider Developing Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) for your Business?

There are two strong reasons why you should develop one for your business-
1.Because it has the above-mentioned features and benefits
2.Because the leading businesses have already adopted PWAs

Which leading businesses? Let’s have a look:

Stories & Examples of Progressive Web Apps (PWAs)

1.Trivago

Though Trivago doesn’t need any introduction, I would like to mention that it is one of the leading travel portals.

Trivago successfully launched their own PWA in the year 2017. Initially, they find it challenging to adopt it because of the following challenges-

• No possibilities to run A/B tests on user experiences with offline and online connections
• Designing and developing the user interface (UI) based on different platform and device
• And, many strategic ones

But, what Trivago achieved at the end of such a challenging step in their journey?

• More than 0.5 million people added PWA of Trivago to their homescreen
• User engagement on PWAs increased by 150%
• 97% increase in clickouts to the hotel offers from the PWA users

In short, improved brand reputation, user engagement, user experience, and conversions.

2.Starbucks

Who wouldn’t know that coffee is at its best at Starbucks?

So yes, Starbucks too made up its mind to have a Progressive Web App to make following things in no to poor internet connection-

• Easy menu browsing
• Quick customized ordering
• Efficient shopping cart management and payment processing

Starbucks saw the below-mentioned benefits after switching to PWA:

• Great fast, integrated, reliable, and engaging experience
• 100% increase in the no. of people who now places an order on mobile
• 2x daily and monthly active users with PWA
• More than 20% of an average increase in conversion rate on mobile

3.Instagram

Hey, are you on Insta? If not, you must be kidding.

Instagram launched its PWA in 2017 with the sole purpose to increase their reach to users with low-end devices. And, the result was-

• 2x retention ratio of web users

4.Twitter

You must be following a lot many people on Twitter. But, have you ever noticed how are you able to be satisfied with its user experience?

It’s because Twitter made default mobile web experience for all the users across the globe in the year 2017 using Twitter Lite PWA.

According to stats mentioned here, the results of switching to PWA were-

• Increase in loading speed
• More reliability
• Increase in user engagement
• A decrease in data consumption
• 65% increase in pages per session
• 75% increase in Tweets sent
• Bounce rate decreased by 20%
• And, still counting

5.OLX

“OLX pe bech de”- this is what comes to our mind whenever we hear OLX. It is an online portal to place classified ads to buy, sell or exchange goods.

Their challenges include higher bounce rates, slower mobile web experiences, and lower loading speed of the ads.

OLX worked around their challenges and looked for PWA for their one and only solution. And, look at the below stats on what they received after switching to PWA:

• 250% increase in the user engagement
• 80% improvement in the bounce rates
• 146% increased CTR on the ads

And, the list also includes-

• Forbes
• Ola
• BookMyShow
• MakeMyTrip
• And, many more

Conclusion

Now that you know that what are the progressive web apps, how they are beneficial for any business, any industry, and how they have already helped various popular brands, you should consider developing one for your own business.

If you don’t know where to start about switching to the Progressive web app (PWA), let’s connect and discuss.