Progressive Web Apps: An Introduction to Revolutionary Web Experience

Every business has an app, even our government is still catching up as they have also come to speed by digitalizing their services. Thanks to the advancement of technology, all these are now possible. The website usually serves as the first point of contact for businesses and their customers. Studies have shown that people tend to use apps more than the website. This is where Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) come in, by leveraging web technologies to provide a native app-like user experience to users. It combines the best of both worlds - the reach and accessibility of the web and the seamless user experience of native apps - PWAs have become a game-changer in the digital landscape. In this article, we will delve into the world of Progressive Web Apps, exploring their definition, key principles, benefits, and the essential features that make them stand out.

Understanding Progressive Web Apps

Progressive Web Apps, often abbreviated as PWAs, are web applications that leverage modern web technologies to deliver a native app-like experience to users. They can be accessed through web browsers, and mobile devices, enabling users to interact with them without needing to download the apps from app stores. However, by choice, they can still be uploaded on app stores like Appstore and Google Playstore. Now that is what makes a web app ‘progressive’ - It fuses the best aspects of both the web and native apps. It should be:

• Capable: Until recently, only platform-specific apps could lay claims to capabilities such as having access to the internal device APIs, which means they can use resources such as GPS, storage, and camera. Thanks to APIs such as WebRTC, geolocation, and push notifications, web apps are able to behave like their native counterparts. The introduction of WebAssembly has made it possible for developers to tap into other ecosystems such as Rust, C, and C++, and bring tons of capabilities to the web. All these capabilities are built with the web’s secure and user-centric permission model, ensuring visiting a website is never scary for users.

• Reliable: A reliable Progressive Web app should be fast and dependable irrespective of the network. In order to provide a seamless experience for users, it is expected that a PWA allows fast user interaction, when the user scrolls or clicks on a button. Finally, a PWA is expected to still work under poor network conditions. Users should be able to see recent content that they have interacted with.

• Installable: I can still recall my first experience with a progressive web app. I had just visited the Coinmarketcap website again, and I was prompted to install the web app by adding it to my home screen, which I did. I was now able to get notifications such as price alerts and news regarding coins that were on my watchlist, and this always gave me the urge to open the app. I could do all these without having to open my Chrome browser!

Such is how progressive web apps behave, they can run in a standalone window instead of a browser. And they are launchable from the home screen. When a progressive web app becomes a standalone app, it transforms how users think and interact with it.

Benefits and Advantages of PWAs

The adoption of PWAs comes with a host of benefits for both the developers and end-users:

• Improved User Experience (UX) and Performance: PWAs offer a fast, smooth, and responsive user experience even on slow networks. They load quickly, reducing bounce rates and increasing user engagement.

• Responsiveness and Cross-Platform Compatibility: PWAs are designed to adapt to any device, whether it is a mobile phone, desktop, or tablet, providing a consistent experience across platforms.

• Offline Functionality and Reliability: The ability of PWAs to cache recent data makes it possible for users to still access content and functionality under poor network conditions.

• Reduced Development and Maintenance Cost: The deployment and maintenance of native apps are quite expensive. A company will need to develop separate apps for different platforms. Being platform-independent eliminates that need, streamlining the development process and reducing maintenance costs.

• Increased Engagement and Conversion: In comparing mobile and desktop conversions, companies experience a big disparity between the two: People spend more time on mobile, yet mobile conversion is still much lower than on desktop. PWAs help to overcome this gap and boost mobile revenue, providing a well-performing website that is optimized for mobile and has great UX.

  The app-like experience and native-like features lead to more user engagement and boost conversion rates for businesses.

• SEO-Friendly: Since PWAs are basically built with web technologies, they can be optimized according to Google guidelines, making them easily discoverable by search engines. This is a major advantage of PWAs over native apps.

Key Features of Progressive Web Apps

PWAs incorporate several essential features to enhance user experience:

1. Push Notifications for Users Engagement: Users can opt-in to receive push notifications, allowing businesses to engage users with timely updates and promotions.

2. Responsive Design and Adaptive Layout: PWAs are built to fit any device screen size or orientation, ensuring they look great on both mobile and desktops.

3. Add to Home Screen: Users can easily add PWAs to their home screen for quick access.

4. App-like Navigation and Smooth Animations: PWAs use smooth transitions and animations to provide a native app-like feel.

5. Secure with HTTPS and Secure Context: PWAs require HTTPS to ensure data security and user trust.

6. Background Sync for Offline Data Syncing: PWAs can sync data in the background, enabling users to interact with the app seamlessly even without a network connection.

7. Offline Support with Service Workers: This is one of the key tools of PWAs. Service workers cache essential resources, enabling PWAs to function offline and reduce reliance on a stable network connection.

8. Web App Manifest: This is a JSON file that contains how the app should behave in a standalone mode, by assigning an icon upon installation of the app and assigning a theme and background colour to the app. The presence of a web manifest file makes Chrome on Android proactively suggest the installation of the app. For that to be possible, The app must satisfy the following criteria:

• have a valid Web manifest file,

• served over an HTTPS connection,

• have been visited twice, with at least five minutes between each visit,

• have a valid Service Worker registered.

Building a Progressive Web App

Building PWAs involves implementing specific technologies and best practices just as you would do to a standard web app. Developers can start with an existing web app and progressively enhance it to become a PWA. By utilizing Service Worker for caching and offline capabilities and implementing Web App Manifest to control the app’s behaviour, developers can create powerful PWAs that enhance the user experience.

Best Practices for Progressive Web Apps

To maximize the benefits of PWAs, developers should adhere to best practices such as:

• prioritizing performance optimization,

• adopting a mobile-first-approach,

• optimizing for low-bandwidth environments,

• ensuring accessibility and inclusivity,

• and thoroughly testing PWAs on different devices.

Case Studies of Successful Progressive Web Apps

Several well-known companies and organizations have embraced PWAs and experienced significant positive outcomes. We'll explore some successful examples and analyze the impact of PWA on user engagement and business growth:

• Pinterest: Upon realizing the potential of PWAs to improve conversion, they rebuilt their mobile app using PWA, which resulted in positive results. Time spent is up by 40% compared to the previous mobile Web, user-generated revenue is up by 44% and core engagements are up by 60%.

• Uber: As the company's reach continues to increase, the need arose for a better and more efficient way of satisfying its users. Uber rebuilt their Web from scratch as a PWA. This makes car booking viable on low-speed networks, also enabling the continued action of riders on low-end devices.

  Upon the switch to a super-lightweight Web app, Uber has enabled quick ride requests regardless of location, network speed, and device. The core app of 50kb loads within 3 seconds on 2g networks.

• MakeMyTrip: With about eight million monthly visits and increasing mobile traffic India's foremost travel company saw the need to embrace PWA. The new PWA has tripled its conversion rates by reducing page load times by 38% compared with its previous mobile site. MakeMyTrip experienced a 160% increase in user engagement and lowered the bounce rates by 20%.

• Spotify: Your favorite music player is also PWA powered. Due to the disagreement between Spotify and apple regarding the 30% Apple store commission, Spotify saw a timely opportunity to follow the PWAs trend. Compared to its native app counterpart, this PWA version is considerably faster with its unique and adaptive UI that changes its background as the user progresses, while also prompting users to add Spotify to their home screen. Thus making the Spotify app easily accessible.

The Future of Progressive Web Apps

The future of Progressive Web Apps holds great promise, with advancements in technology and closer integration with native mobile platforms on the horizon.

Conclusion

Progressive Web Apps are reshaping the web development landscape, offering users an immersive and user-friendly experience across all devices. By harnessing the power of PWAs, developers, and businesses can unlock new opportunities for engagement and growth. As the web ecosystem evolves, PWAs will undoubtedly play a pivotal role in shaping the future of web experiences.