Progressive Web App is the new buzzword in the e-Commerce market. It is being considered as a game-changer for online businesses by various technology experts. Being a comparatively new technology, businesses with tight strings on their purses hesitate to adopt this technology.
However, large conglomerates have welcomed it with open arms and are quick to adopt Progressive Web Apps (PWA). SMEs often opt for low-cost solutions like hiring a Magento web development company to develop their e-Commerce sites but often fail to capitalize on the prowess of new technologies such as PWA to save a few bucks.
SMEs often take too much time to analyze the benefits of novel technologies and, in the pursuit, fail to make the most of first-mover advantage. This post provides a quick view of PWA in-depth with the associated pros and cons. Being a top CMS, Magento provides ample options for its users to encash the hype around PWAs. Let’s try to understand what a Magento PWA is first.
Progressive Web App – An Overview
A PWA is a website that behaves like a mobile app. Responsive websites have become quite popular due to overwhelmingly increasing smartphone users. Responsive websites look similar on all the screens, i.e., it automatically adjusts the size of the content and images according to the screen size.
PWAs take it up a notch higher by just not acting like a responsive website but unleashing a whole new array of capabilities.
PWAs are a lighter version of websites that makes browsing and shopping lightning quick. The impatient shoppers of today’s generation often get distracted due to slowly loading websites, denting the revenues of e-commerce sites. PWAs solve this problem by reducing the cart abandonment rate to a minimum.
PWAs are gradually becoming a new norm for a modern UX. Magento integrated with PWA is creating quite a stir in the web-o-sphere by providing an enriching experience to shoppers worldwide.
Why Progressive Web Apps?
There is massive competition in the e-Commerce market. Most of the e-Commerce players use native apps to make the experience of shopping smooth for shoppers. These native apps are a good bet wherein the Internet connection is fast and steady. But, PWAs fare better than the native apps in case of slow internet speed. Another staggering feature of PWA is that it doesn’t need to be installed compared to native apps.
Mobile phone users with limited storage capacity often are reluctant to download a native app. They have to click on a button named “Add to Home” available on the website to generate a PWA automatically. This PWA needs to occupy limited space on the device, making it a better choice for devices with limited storage capacity.
So, a PWA enhances the conversion rate and boosts the online businesses’ revenue, leaving the user satisfied in terms of speed, experience, and stability. There have been various success stories of PWA like Facebook Lite and Flipkart Lite, increasing the customer base and revenue of large technology giants.
Advantages of Progressive Web App
- Speed: PWAs use the age-old concept of caching that enables the browser to download crucial information first up. This boosts the pace of the web app. Speed plays an integral part in the success or failure of the e-Commerce business. The shoppers nowadays are looking for rapid experience on shopping websites. A faster PWA provides a competitive business advantage over the traditional business using native apps.
- Installation Not Required: PWAs don’t need to be installed as they are mere websites. Due to this, users can access PWA using an already installed web browser without installing the PWA. This also eases the update process of the app, making the life of developers easy. New features can be rolled out as and when needed without any fuss.
- Offline Ready: PWAs can pick up essential web pages from the cache for accessing by the shopper in no time. It means that PWAs can work even with a slow internet connection or no Internet as well. PWAs are thus more reliable than a native app.
- Elegant UI: PWAs are more elegant and responsive than a conventional native app. Higher the user engagement level, the more successful the e-Commerce business. The stunning UI and super responsiveness of PWA heighten the user-engagement level. Apart from this, the web push notification feature boosts the number of repeat visitors.
The advantages mentioned above of PWAs make a strong case for e-Commerce businesses to opt for a progressive web app development company and gain an edge over their competitors.
Success Stories of Progressive Web Apps
- Starbucks: Starbucks opted for PWA in the year 2017 for improving responsiveness and speed. The PWA of Starbucks provided users the option to go through the menu, and nutritional information of items served. The users were able even to customize orders without any Internet connection. Their PWA occupied 233 KB space only as compared to their 148 MB heavy iOS app. The PWA resulted in enriching the customer experience and hence doubling the number of daily active users.
- Twitter: Twitter went for PWA when more than 80% of Twitter users were using a smartphone. Twitter Lite at 600 KB was much lighter than their 23.5 MB heavy Android app. It was launched keeping in mind the users with slow internet connections. The offline browsing feature allowed users to access Twitter without the Internet as well. As a result, Twitter sensed a 75% increase in sent tweets and a 65% jump in pages browsed per session.
Final Thoughts
The exponential growth in smartphone users’ numbers forced the e-Commerce market to turn to native mobile apps. PWAs are the new disruption in the e-Commerce segment, which is now being taken advantage of by biggies. Time is of the essence if you want to cash in on the early mover advantage. With Magento 2 integrating support for PWA, the demand for the same is expected to grow substantially.
The PWAs have set the cash registers ringing for big corporations. Now it’s the time for SMEs to ride this wave of disruption. Instead of waiting for this new trend to become standard, now is the time to reap instant benefits by hiring a progressive web app development company for developing their PWA.
