Time to Unwrap the Potential Progressive Web Apps (PWA)
Over these years, there has already been a lot of spotlight and geek speaks on building PWA and its advantages. Due to which many companies are found capitalizing on its extensive capabilities. The following post sums up on what possibilities PWAs is all set to open for businesses now and in future.
Over these years, there has already been a lot of spotlight and geek speaks on building PWA and its advantages. Due to which many companies are found capitalizing on its extensive capabilities. The following post sums up on what possibilities PWAs is all set to open for businesses now and in the future.
It may quite interest you to know that the total number of mobile app downloads in the year 2017 was around 197 billion. This calls for several businesses venturing into having an app developed. Now creating a traditional app can be a costly venture and often use a significant amount of data as well as storage on the users’ device. This is where PWAs play their trump card. In the present scenario, some of the top players like Google, AliExpress, and Flipkart seem to have reached a 50-100% increase in retention and conversion rates.
According to Wikipedia, Progressive Web Apps are regular web pages or websites that look more like native mobile applications. They feature both capabilities of websites and mobile software offering an immersive user experience and increase user engagement and conversion rate. According to several relevant sources, it has been proved that by creating PWAs, one can witness:
- 68% increase in mobile traffic
- 15-fold improvement of load and installation speed
- 25-times reduced the use of device storage
- 52% average conversion increase
- 78% average session increase
- 137% engagement increase
- 42.86% lower bounce rate when compared to that of mobile websites
- 133.67% increase in page views
Image Source: Appinstitute.com
Why are Progressive Web Apps better for your business?
Of course, the aforementioned figures do have some significance. Further below I would like to mention a few key advantages of PWA for business and their capabilities to find out why businesses, from startups to market leaders, should opt for them.
#1 Market Reach
No matter what industry you are in, your end goal is to get as many users as you can. However, web apps don’t necessarily need to be progressive- are accessible everywhere. Especially if you are located in a country with poor internet connections, PWAs is the best option for reaching more users. Many of you have been facing this misconception that web can never act as a better option for startups than mobile. But the fact is the web allows companies to reach everyone, regardless of having Android and iOS devices.
#2 Low Development Costs
PWAs do not require different versions for various devices; a single app meets the requirements of all endpoints on which it operates. It significantly reduces the amount of efforts that developers provide, and as a result, the cost to create PWA decreases. The price is three or four times lower than that of a native mobile app.
#3 App-Like Look and Feel
In the present scenario, mobile users prefer apps instead of browsers. Indeed, applications being more user-friendly, featuring more attractive interface and can operate offline are considered more favorable in comparison to browsers. With the help of Progressive Web Apps, you can provide an advanced user experience by combining the look and feel with performance. Regardless of technologies, tools and frameworks on which PWAs are developed provide the same user experience as native mobile apps do, and it is considered to be superior to that of websites.
It may also interest you to know that they have the same speed, responsiveness and comprehensive capabilities of websites with database access and automatic data.
#4 Great for SEOs
In addition to low data, storage and cost, one of the significant benefit of using PWA is it works great for SEO. For example, Uber’s PWA takes less than 2 seconds to load. This has profoundly impacted on search engine rankings. PWA will be indexed quickly too, and it provides a great user experience which all add to the success of your SEO strategy.
Image Source: Uber
#5 No updates
What if I say with PWA at hand you don’t need to require to update things now and then. It allows them to update on the automatic basis without notifying users or bothering them with permission requests. These apps update themselves whenever users visit them, thus eliminating the need to download batch changes and install them. If you are looking to come up with an app that offers a renewed look with no human participation, PWA is the right choice.
Time to Be Progressive
Apart from aforementioned pointers, Progressive web apps can offer other benefits like simplifying the management of your points of sales, upgrading the UX of your online store or even reaching new customers in areas of poor internet connection. Although, the technology is still evolving, but the future of PWAs seems to be pretty bright. So that’s all for now! Keep watching the space to get a better perspective!
About the Author
Working as a manager in a software development company Tatvasoft.com, Vikash Chaudhary also has a passion of part time blogging and love to share technical insights on various topics. When he is not working you will find him doing writing or cooking for himself. He also believes that he can be a chef in his free time.
