What is a PWA?

PWA stands for progressive web app. This is an app built from the web technologies we all know and love, like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, but with a feel and functionality that rivals an actual native app. Thanks to a couple of smart additions, you can turn almost any website into a progressive web app. This means that you can build a PWA rather quickly, in regards to a native app that’s pretty difficult to develop. Plus, you can offer all the features of native apps, like push notifications, offline support, and much more.

Many sites you find online are actually a progressive web app. Take twitter.com, for instance. If you visit that site on your smartphone, you can install it to your home screen. Now, on opening the saved Twitter site, you’ll notice that it looks and performs just like a native app. There’s no browser window or nothing. There’s no difference in running it from an iPhone or an Android smartphone. Simply log in and you’re good to go. That’s a major benefit of building your web app with a PWA in mind.

PWAs are gaining popularity. Many big sites are PWAs, like Starbucks.com, Pinterest.com, Washingtonpost.com and Uber.com are actually installable on your home screen and offer a comparable experience to their native apps.

Progressive Web Apps can drive business success

To shape your digital strategy, several stakeholders are often involved: the Product Manager and CMO are co-owners of the business impact of each feature, the CTO assesses the feasibility and reliability of a technology, the UX Researchers validate that a feature answers a real customer issue.

This article aims to help you answer those three questions and shape your PWA project. You will start from your customer needs, translate this into PWA features, and focus on measuring the business impact that each feature brings to the table.

Why?
Because most of the leading brands have started understanding its place in the app development industry, its features, and benefits for the businesses.

Do you know?

• Trivago increased their user engagement on PWA by 150%
• Starbucks received an 100% increase in the no. of people who now place an order mobile using its PWA
• Twitter’s PWA saw an increase in loading speed, user engagement, and reliability
• OLX saw an 250% increase in the user engagement after developing PWA

PWAs solve customer needs

One rule we love to follow at Google when making products is ''focus on the user and all else will follow''. Think user-first: 
 

What’s the difference between a native app and a PWA?

A native app, like the ones you download from Apple’s App Store or Google’s Play Store, is often built in a programming language specific to that platform. So for iOS apps, that would be Swift and for Android apps, Java. If you want to build an app for those platforms, you need to know the technology. Yes, there are shortcuts, but these come with their own limitations. If you want to have an app on all the mobile platforms, you need to know all the different technologies. There’s no easy way to build one and publish it to all the stores out there.

Of course, there are ways to get the best of both worlds. A progressive web app, for instance. This runs in the browser and — once saved to the home screen — functions like a native app. It even gets access to the underlying hardware and software that the browser can’t access for safety reasons. If the PWA performs great, users will never know that they are using a web-based app instead of a native one.

There are some caveats, of course. While browsers have been quick to adopt the technology for this, there are still some limitations. On iOS, the technology needed works spotty in Safari. Apple doesn’t (want to) support everything yet, making it a bit of a chore to get the same exact experience everywhere.
 

What are the benefits of a PWA?

The main reason why everyone is chasing after apps is because they offer greater engagement. Users who install your app are your biggest fans and they are more likely to turn their usage into sales or signups. Thanks to push notifications it’s much easier to re-engage with users. Apps can offer an excellent experience that can do well for a brand.

We talked about some of the plusses of PWAs in this article, but here’s a short overview:

• You don’t have to go through the process to get into different app stores
• You can build PWAs with common web technologies
• They are often cheaper to build
• Since you’re turning your site into an app, you’ll have fewer code-bases to maintain
• PWAs are responsive and work with many different screen sizes
• PWAs are smooth, fast and lightweight
• No need to hand off big chunks of money to Google and Apple
• They work offline, unlike your regular site
• PWAs are discoverable via search engines (which have a lot larger audience than app stores. Plus, if you want you can still get your PWAs distributed via app stores)
• You can use push notifications to re-engage users
• Installing a PWA can lead to higher engagement

Still, native apps win out sometimes. PWAs get deeper and deeper access to the operating system of a smartphone, but a native app can go deeper still. Plus, there are limits to what a PWA can do. For instance, PWAs are not the best choice when you want to build high-performance games.

All in all, it makes a lot of sense to think about having a PWA in your mobile strategy. But, the main question you should ask yourself is: does my audience want this?

Who’s this for?

Should everyone simply build a PWA and be done with it? No, consider your business and — more importantly — your target audience. Are they even using apps? Isn’t this an overly complex way of getting to what you want to achieve? Again, like everything, you need to research the needs of your audience. Ask yourself, what do you want this technology to do? Where are your users? Do they have a good data connection and solid hardware? How and where are they using your content? And do you think an app can help them do their job better?

PWAs are awesome and implementing them doesn’t have to be all that hard. But just because it’s easy doesn’t mean you should do it. If your audience has no need for it, why would you build one?
 

What are the SEO concerns of a PWA?

The PWA is inherently web-centric. It was born from the web and developed with search engines in mind to make discovery easy. Of course, you can make a progressive web app out of any-old site and it doesn’t take much to do so. However, many PWAs use JavaScript to build more complex functionality and while search engines have become apt at rendering JavaScript, it can still be a cause for concern.

When setting up a PWA, you have to make sure your JavaScript is accessible. Don’t block files for bots and make sure that links are available. To improve the rendering process you can make your JavaScript framework use server-side rendering.

Turning your site into a PWA doesn’t mean you directly improve the SEO of that site. If it makes sense to turn your site into a PWA, do so, but don’t do it for any perceived SEO benefits. If you have a great PWA, you are offering your users a fantastic user experience, which might make you one-up your competition. In this regard, it’s a good idea to take a look at them for your mobile SEO strategy.

PWAs are platform-independent

One of the major concerns for a business owner is to research, analyze, and conclude on where your audience is searching for you, your business, your products or services.

So, whether you should first be on Android or iOS – is one of the toughest question or a dilemma for you.

But, you will be relieved to know that PWAs are completely different than what an Android or iOS app is.

Once, you have developed your own Progressive Web App (PWA), your PWA works exactly the same on any platform, any device.

So, now no more brainstorming discussions on whether to go for an Android app or an iOS app. Just develop a PWA and you are done with your audience across all platforms.

PWAs are not listed on any app stores

What is a PWA?

A PWA is a web application that functions as a native application. And, the web applications, being browser-based, are never uploaded on to any app store.

That makes PWAs more preferable for you because nowadays the app stores have now become stricter for uploading apps.

Also, there is a lot of competition between apps and to stay on the top, is also a task with the native or hybrid application.

PWAs can be shared easily

Being a web application, PWA is free from all the app stores. So, any users with any platform or device can use it. But, the concern is how to share it with your customers? The PWAs are shared through a URL. Once, you have your PWA developed, you get a URL that you need to share via emails, social media posts, SMS, QR codes, etc. The sharing of the PWA is as simple as you do a social media post. Share it and your customers can launch on their homescreen when they open the URL.
It’s that easy!

PWAs have no lengthy download & install process

So, now you exactly know how your customers would find your PWA. How about downloading and installing your PWA?
Your customers have to click on that PWA URL, open the PWA, click on a button, “Add to Homescreen” and your customers can see your app downloaded and installed on their device. They can access your PWA on their homescreen.
That means your PWA removes the hassles of your customers to locate your app, click on the button, “install”, wait for the download process to start, progress, and finish, and finally, constantly look for the installation process to get completed.
A tedious and boring process made simple!
 

PWAs are highly secure & reliable

Being a web application, PWAs need to be developed using extra data security layers. And, PWAs are served using HTTPS which even Google enforces on.
And, we all know that Google does not compromise on security and so your PWA is highly secure and reliable for your customers and even for you and your business.

PWAs don’t occupy device storage

The major purpose of developing your PWA is improving the customer experience. And, most customers don’t download a new app if they are running out of the device storage.
So, there are chances that your customers would look into your app, understand its benefits to download it, but won’t download it because of the storage it requires.
This is completely removed with PWAs as they are browser-based and don’t take up the device storage that the traditional apps require.
A perfect fit for your customers, right?

PWAs load faster

The invention of Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) was done by Google in order to load the content of the application much faster in any network condition.
So, you can say that it is the forte of PWAs to load faster which improves the user experience and you achieve your goals with your PWA.

PWAs improves user engagement

From the very beginning, I am saying that PWAs are just like the native applications.
That means PWAs does not have any challenges of web applications but have all the features and benefits that a native application has.
And, the best of features that a native application have is the push notifications. Push notifications help engage your customers to a great extent as they have the highest CTR and customer retention.
The PWA is what you need for your next app.

PWAs have SEO benefits

There are more than 3 million apps in the Google Play Store and more than 2 million apps in the Apple App Store as per the Statista.
Imagine the competition each business, each industry is facing in the mobile application industry. And, as I said earlier, that in such a hugely competitive market, it is difficult to stay on the top of the app stores and get more downloads and even earn out of the mobile apps.
All the app stores have their own SEO factors and limitations as well. That makes optimizing your app for the app stores time-consuming, ineffective, and expensive.
But, that is not the case with Progressive Web Apps (PWAs).
Being a web application, PWA can be easily crawled and indexed by the search engines compared to any other apps. There are no limitations to adding a certain amount of words in the description and so that the app stores have.
So, there are increased chances of your PWA getting ranked for most keywords compared to your native app.

PWAs are developed faster

The developers don’t have to develop the different apps for both Android and iOS. They have to just develop a web application which takes much less time compared to traditional apps.
So, you don’t have to wait for a longer period of time to market your app and offer an excellent customer experience.

PWAs are cost effective

There are various factors that conclude that PWAs are inexpensive-

• You save money on developing apps for all platforms
• You save money on open-source development frameworks
• You save money on App store optimization, campaigns on receiving app reviews, etc. which are the added costs to optimizing your website
• Generally, developing apps faster take more amount of hours which can cost you a bomb

Looking at the benefits PWA offers, you save a lot of money compared to traditional apps. That makes it the most preferable option for your next app.

Since 2007, we have now designed over 4085+ websites for all sizes of companies (SME's and berhad), we have designed for over 18 different industries and successfully enhanced their online marketing campaigns. No matter your industry, whether if it is retailing or wholesaling, service or product, our web design and service will surely be able to satisfy your needs and requirements. We have customers covering every state in Malaysia, including: Perlis, Kedah, Perak, Selangor, Kuala Lumpur, Terengganu, Kelantan,Negeri Sembilan, Melacca,Kuantan, Johor, Sabah, Sarawak and so on. Therefore, no matter where you are we can give you a 1 to 1 consultation on how to build your website!

Get Your PWA Now！