Since the embellishment of progressive web applications has led many firms to take huge advantage of this new platform to enhance and improve upon user experience and expand their customer base. Some reputable firms such as Alibaba, Twitter, Wal-Mart, and others have taken the tremendous opportunity to reach sky potential into producing progressive web apps.
However, PWA doesn’t adopt the framework approach but is rather a set of practices to deliver a similar to a desktop or mobile application. The main purpose is to have a uniform app that works across all devices, even on older generation phones. The following are some reasons that prove firms must opt for PWAs in the year 2020.
- Easy Migration
What makes progressive web apps easy to use is due to its easy migration of an existing application and enhancing it with progressive features. Migration steps only involve adding a few sets of files such as the manifest file to enable app installation, some images, and iconic elements on home screens and service workers for offline enablement. However, one of the most challenging parts developers face is the implementation of a service worker and deciding how to handle incoming requests and cache. There is a tool known as a lighthouse on Google chrome that allows testing the apps’ progressiveness and generating a statistical report consequently.
- Easier Client Base Expansion
If users are not dependent on any platform, then why an application should be knot-tied to a specific platform as well? Progressive web apps eliminate this problem by being accessible across all devices over the internet. Users can easily benefit from this service even if they relocate to another location. In less developed countries, the internet seems to be a prevalent issue where slow speeds, less connectivity base can be quite a problem. This is where progressive apps come into action, offering the full functionality of working offline. When the application is first launched, the shell is cached; all network requests are queued and handled as soon as the internet becomes available.
- No Marketplace Fee
Application digital stores require a membership or subscription fees for each application. Submission of application and the acceptance process can be very time consuming and may take weeks before the process is completed. This wastes precious development time. Some modern web development tools could process financial payments and even deploy applications at a faster pace. This gives developers and their teams the power to release new versions as frequently as they want to. Adding a new enhancement feature, security update, or anything else can be released as soon as it is developed, leading to great progression. They can install the application directly from their browsers allowing users to bypass stores altogether.
- Time Savings
When firms relate to “time is money” concept, they regard time as an asset that makes it imperative for firms to develop apps at a faster pace. As aforementioned above, easy migration comes into the time-saving category due to its massive amount of time saved as compared to developing native apps that can be time-consuming. While PWAs provide much more than traditional applications, there are still use cases where native applications suit much better. Sometimes PWA might be unnecessary due to differing business requirements, specific target audience, security protocols, and many other factors constituting app development.
- More Engagement with Push Notifications
Similar to native applications, progressive web application utilizes user hardware by sending push-notifications on user’s home screen across multiple mobile devices. Intuitively, a business can reach their audience directly on mobile devices even when there is no internet access. These messages have an impact on user engagement and behavior, capturing the user’s attention accordingly. Almost the entire world has access to the internet accounting for 96% of internet users. People don’t save their email addresses or personal information on websites allowing firms to turn this blind spot to a sweet spot. Many users want to have applications to send notifications on their screen, thus increasing opportunities for firms to promote their products and services.
- Reduced Development Costs
The building, optimizing, and providing website maintenance can exhaust resources and quadruple investment when building native apps. Mobile application Development Company producing PWAs eliminates the need for additional resources, maintenance costs, and marketing. This provides a golden opportunity for firms to serve all platforms, making it a unified distribution channel to build, maintain, serve, and develop. Thus it reduces costs, time, and human effort, serving the user with an enhanced experience and all capabilities to customers and hence, keeping a multichannel strategy.
- Improved SEO
As PWA is web-based, everything seems to be available online. Any content within PWA can be connected and ranked on multiple search engines such as Google or Bing. Native apps don’t allow search engine robots to crawl over. So by breaking down the barriers between PWA and native apps, users can be directly linked to more digital products in the upcoming year.