Progressive Web Apps for Business

What is a progressive web app?

A progressive web app (PWA) is a web application that can be installed on your iOS or Android device directly from the browser in one click. With progressive web apps, you don’t need to go to the Apple Store or Google Play Store to install an app on your smartphone or tablet.

Check out a tutorial on How to install and use PWA.

Progressive Web Apps Pros & Cons

PWA benefits include but not limited to:

Engagement & brand recognition

Having an app icon installed on Home Screen will make customers return more often to your marketplace. Attracting attention from the device display is probably one of the most important PWA features that progressive web apps share with native mobile apps. Based on the performance statistics by Alibaba and Forbes PWAs, customer engagement can increase by 20% to 70% just because of the ability to install an app easily. It was noted that each additional step to download an application reduces the number of potential users by 20%.

Discoverability

PWA is a perfect tool for digital marketing needs. It has a positive influence on essential metrics and ergo SEO rankings allowing bringing a sufficient amount of organic traffic. Despite that a website is now an app it’s still linkable and can be shared through a URL in social networks and other Internet resources. So you can turn any website in a distribution platform for your app that can be installed directly from a browser after completing two easy steps.

Universal access

With progressive web apps, there are no app store restrictions and hence your project shouldn’t path any approval processes. Users can install any app as long as it isn’t blocked by their network or old browser issues.

Push notifications

Involve your customers in your brand life more by sending them messages whenever you want. Android users will see notification numbers above a progressive web app’s icon, just as with a native app ( for iOS TBA ).

Offline mode

A progressive web app allows customers to use your website even when they’re offline. You can offer behavior enabling full or partial offline availability as in native apps. This way connection problems don’t affect the duration and quality of user sessions and ergo website conversions.

Automatic updates

PWAs are updated automatically as soon as a new version comes out. No need to deal with the routine of uploading an update to the Apple and Google stores. All changes are applied to the background and don’t user sessions allowing them to have smooth web experience.

Here you can check how PWA can help your business exactly.

PWAs and SEO

Search engines treat progressive web apps just like regular websites that’s why they are easily indexed and even can show different layers of content. This is especially helpful for content-centric applications such as blogs, magazines, and social networks.
Additionally, Google audits show that PWA performance on slow Internet connections is the best in comparison to mobile websites and native apps. The best mobile experience for web users earns for them better SEO rankings.

Cost to create a PWA

To turn any website into PWA is much easier and hence much less expensive than to create a native app. The development time depends on features your project requires. For online stores, it can be shortened if they opt for eCommerce progressive storefront.

Progressive web apps disadvantages

As progressive apps are web applications by origin, they don’t have the same level of access to device hardware as native apps. Fingerprint scanners, vicinity sensors, NFC, Bluetooth, geofencing, and advanced camera controls won’t be accessible in PWAs.

It’s easy to check what features are available to progressive websites by visiting What Web Can Do Today.