Apps are everywhere, especially if you are active in the B2C world, you will undoubtedly notice that your organization cannot do without one. But the moment you start developing one app, you will soon notice that it is an expensive, long and time-consuming job to make one -well, at least a good one. Fortunately, things can be done differently. Perhaps a PWA, Progressive Web App, is the ideal solution for you!
What is a PWA
Most consumer-oriented companies operate on two fronts. They have both an app and a website. That website can then be subdivided into a desktop site and a mobile site. A PWA is exactly in the middle between the website and the full-stack app. It is essentially an extension of the website that instead behaves more like an app.
Benefits:
In recent years, PWAs have been on the rise for many logical reasons. Compared to a normal app, they are:
- Faster on all fronts (development, but also loading time)
- Cheaper to develop
- Easier to maintain (much fewer updates needed)
- Possible to market outside of the app stores, namely via your own website
- Able to lead to a twenty percent higher turnover
How does a PWA work?
You regularly come across PWAs on your smartphone, but perhaps without realizing that it is a PWA. If you visit a mobile website, you now regularly receive a request to install the site’s PWA. If you accept that request, it will be added to your screen just like a normal app. A major advantage for the user is that a PWA is much smaller in size – often a mere few MBs.
Under the hood
The content of the PWA is almost always the same as the mobile site, but often faster. That’s because the PWA uses the cache memory to store a portion of the mobile site. For example, the first ten articles you come across. This is done by service workers: a JavaScript file that works event-driven. Unlike normal JavaScript, a service worker operates asynchronously and can also retrieve information when the PWA is not open. That way you can also use the PWA partly offline. It then shows the latest information stored in the cache.
Success stories
PWAs are extremely successful. For example, a few years ago Twitter introduced their PWA Twitter Lite. This resulted in a 65 percent increase in the number of page visits, led to 75 percent more tweets and lowered the bounce rate by 20 percent. More such case studies can be found at www.pwastats.com.
Deregister that app?
Does all this mean that with a PWA you no longer need a native app? That depends purely on how you want to use the app. A normal app is more user-friendly, so it is more suitable for complex tasks or information provision. But for customer-oriented industries such as retail or e-commerce where speed is decisive, developing a PWA is definitely a must.
Do you want to know if a PWA is also the ideal solution for your company? Please contact one of our experts for more information. Or read our whitepaper about how to improve your (mobile) web performance to learn more.
