To survive in an ever evolving and growing environment, adapting to new technology is highly imperative. Technology and its usage has changed drastically in the last few years and is only going to continue in the years to come. The tech industry is changing rapidly in search of better solutions. This has led businesses to opt for new forums in pursuit of better user experiences. Not only is surviving in such a competitive environment difficult, sustaining in it is an even bigger challenge.

A fairly new and innovative technology that has been introduced in this industry is Progressive Web Apps (PWAs). The technology has been around for a while but its popularity and usage has grown significantly over the past few years.

What makes it different?

PWAs are special web applications that provide benefits such as push notifications, offline support, etc. – features of native apps, but can be accessed like normal websites. In the most simplest terms, PWAs are websites but with the advantages of an app. It makes your platform more engaging, faster and effective.

Advantages of PWAs

▶ Increased customer loyalty as the app can be saved on the home screen of devices, increasing efficiency.

▶ More conversion rates with higher search traffic.

▶ Cost effective with nominal maintenance costs.

▶ Higher performance with increased customer engagement.

▶ Drastic increase in revenue.

▶ Time and cost effective as they are faster.

▶ Less data consumption which offers a smoother user experience.

▶ Website can be accessed offline as well.

• ▶ Bookmyshow

PWA has been proved to be more 180x lightweight than their iOS app and 54x than their android app, with an 80%+ increase in their conversion rates.

• ▶ Alibaba

increased their conversion rates by 76%.

• ▶ Pinterest

saw a 60% increase in their user engagement.

• ▶ Starbucks

Post the launch, observed a 2x increase in their daily active users.

Features of PWAs

The overall goal of adopting or switching to a PWA is an enhanced consumer experience. For that PWAs offer features such as.

• ▶ Push notifications

This feature reminds users of the products left in the cart, increasing engagement and user time spent on the site. It also alerts the user about any upcoming event or sale. You can reach out to customers who have ever visited your platform and that too with minimal effort. They originated from native apps, but are more beneficial in PWAs adding value and depth to your platform.

• ▶ Fast loading time

In this fast paced world, a site that takes too long to load will have low customer satisfaction, hence low customer retention. PWA uses client side rendering. In this, with the help of JavaScript, only the required parts of the page are rendered in the client’s browser which helps decrease the page load speed.

• ▶ Lightweight

These are extremely lightweight and can operate efficiently. As speed is essential for conversions, lightweight technologies of HTML, CSS and JavaScript are used for development.

• ▶ Offline usability

The platform can be browsed offline with the previous data also being retrieved, if required in the absence of a network connection. JavaScript files enable offline features as they work independently.

• ▶ No updates

PWAs update themselves hence updating the platform is not required from the users end. This is an essential feature as regular updates can be a hassle for everybody involved.

▶ PWAs can be found in SERPs as they have URLs. This feature is not seen in native apps. Loading time is faster with this feature.

Apart from that, PWAs are secure, reliable, require no installation and are SEO friendly.

PWA Development Tools and Frameworks

To facilitate the development of PWAs numerous tools and frameworks are required. Some of them are:

• ▶ AngularJS

One of the most popular frameworks used for PWA development. The platforms developed by it are responsive, intuitive and powerful. It has an MVC framework, uses JavaScript ecosystem and has a strong community support.

• ▶ ReactJS

A JavaScript framework, uses JSX and is highly scalable as well as flexible. It adds ease in developing progressive web applications. It is an open-sourced, front-end library, making the platform reliable and intuitive.

• ▶ VueJS

One of the top PWA frameworks. It offers fast rendering with Virtual DOM with seamless and simple coding. VueJS is an MVC model, open source and front-end JavaScript framework. Large number of libraries and frameworks make the development process easier and faster.

• ▶ NextJS

It is a React framework which is free and open sourced, used for building interfaces with UI components. It offers additional features such as automatic code splitting and server side rendering.

Apart from these other frameworks such as Polymer, Ionic, LightHouse, ScandiPWA and many more are used.

What is the impact of PWAs?

• ▶ Impacts user experience

User engagement with PWAs have seen a drastic increase as compared to mobile websites. However, with features of native apps, it offers a better experience to the customers.

• ▶ Impacts Performance

We have already discussed the importance of page-load time. Customer retention is more if pages take less than 3 seconds to load. With this being the major USP of PWAs, it sets it apart from native apps.

• ▶ Impacts accessibility

The above two points make the platform accessible and take the business to the next level for it makes sustainability easier in growing and emerging industries. Being accessible while providing an ‘out of the world’ customer experience is key for any growing business.

At Metricoid, we believe in collaboration and partnership, assistance at every step along with suggestions and inputs from your end, making sure you are involved in the process. Our models are versatile, which makes them accessible for everyone. We are experienced professionals who will make this process extremely smooth and seamless for you. As one of the leading PWA development companies, we lay special emphasis on the quality of our digital solutions. We help you beat problems of relevancy, competition and scalability. Our PWAs increase conversion rates and engagement by offering PWA solutions that are tailored to suit your needs. As compared to in-house development, we help you cut down 30%-40% of PWA development costs.

Metricoid offers a wide range of PWA Development Services which includes:

▶ Responsive web design

▶ Application architecture

▶ Custom progressive web application development

▶ Progressive web design and development

▶ Data migration

▶ Among many others