So you are now surfing on the browser of your laptop, and when clicking on a website, sometimes you might have seen a tab saying, “Add to Home Screen.” You click on the “yes” tab, and the app will start to install in the backdrop. Have you ever experienced this?
Now, imagine having the same experience on your smartphone devices while surfing the website on Safari or Chrome.
Without even having to go to your App Store, you can install a mobile app from a web app. Oh wait. This is nothing. Imagine having to browse the material of the app even when you aren’t online. Doesn’t that even sound awesome? That experience is referred to as PWA.
PWA - Progressive Web App is a website very similar to a mobile app.
PWAs are continually gaining attention. A massive number of brands, like Twitter, Pinterest, and Starbucks, had reported a vast increase in consumer involvement when they switched mobile web experiences and native apps with PWAs.
What are PWAs?
PWA are web apps that influence modern web strategies for conveying a native and rich app-like and consistent experience to customers. PWAs are web apps highlighting dynamic upgrades intended to implement effective features, like background sync, splash screen, caching, push notifications, and offline mode.
So, let’s explore why PWAs are the future.
Increased User Engagement
You might have gone over a few sites that display a dialogue box highlighting Deny or Allow tabs that you can click. If you select the Allow tab, the website will update you whenever you are away. The main benefit of this feature is that with only a single click, you can include this website to your home page. Likewise, in PWAs, the link-adding attribute enables the app to be cached. Hence, you will have app access directly from your home screen.
Increased Security
You must be familiar with the fact that Google likes to encourage websites to have HTTPs instead of HTTP. Also, it doesn’t come to surprise that cybercrimes are rising for web and
top app developers.
The users’ valuable and sensitive data has not been successfully protected by HTTP in the past. This is the reason why webpages are shifted to HTTPs to make it simple to launch PWAs in secure and confined conditions. Clients are likely to feel more confident and peaceful while entering personal and confidential data in PWAs.
Smooth & Quick Website
PWAs are built on new technology, referred to as service workers. Also note that service workers are different event-driven content with access to multiple domain-wide events. They are programmable web intermediaries that dwell between the more extensive web and the client’s tab.
These intermediaries capture and manufacture or rewrite network demands to enable offline support and granular storing. In essential words, they provide reliable and instant stacking irrespective of the network connection. Thus, it promotes enhanced navigation and lesson load times.
Offline Access
Clients have access to previously visited web pages due to service workers. As discussed above, the idea of service workers is the foundation of PWA because they engage content reserving, message pop-up, background updates, and lastly, offline access.
You must note that offline functionality is possible due to service workers. They are Java scripts that can operate autonomously of your application and react adequately to network demands, connectivity changes, and message pop-ups.
Responsive
They work on every screen size and hence, the word responsive. These apps are suitable for various platforms and are super accessible over multiple devices - be it a tablet, mobile phone, laptop, and desktop, etc.
SEO-Centric
PWAs can be easily stored by search engines and are SEO focused. It offers some significant advantages in the context of client acquisition and visibility. It is pretty simple to enhance PWAs following SEO guidelines.
Cost-Effective
PWAs are less costly than native mobile apps because they are built using improved development tools & guidelines. Additionally, you get information confidentiality, security, zero app complexity, and most of all a cross-platform app at a much reasonable cost.
Core Principles
PWAs act and operate just like a native app; unquestionably, they provide a smooth experience with integrated functionality. They assimilate splendid capabilities that make these apps relatively user-centric. PWAs function on the core principles of reliability, higher user engagement, and high-performance.
Performance
PWA enables the user to receive an instant response to whatever action they perform. Beyond 50% of overall clients don't prefer surfing a website if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load. Once they open the webpage, the clients want fast and impeccable response with quick responding connectivity, consistent navigation, and less scrolling.
Engagement
Since PWAs dwell on clients' home screens, they do not need to open the app store. These apps offer an outstanding user experience and re-engage clients with push notifications. They provide complete control over the app's appearance because they are designed using the Web App Manifest.
Reliability
PWAs are dependable as they load on the clients’ devices irrespective of network interface. Hence, if clients are without the internet connection, even then they can access these apps for seeing the record data in offline mode. Storing the data beforehand, eliminates network reliability, and offers an excellent user experience.
Why are PWAs the future of web apps?
Many organizations are embracing PWAs for super-growth and business efficiency. Unquestionably, PWAs are thought of as
the future of web apps, and below are some reasons:
Smooth integration
Cross-platform access
Offline access
High performance
High client engagement
Simple to fix errors and bugs
Super-fast speed
Native-app flexibility
Final words:
PWAs are essential for staying ahead in the competitive market. There are several reasons why PWAs are gaining attention in the digital world. Users experience many issues by using a native app like storage space, internet connectivity, high data usage, the cost involved in the development, and others.
With PWAs all these problems are eliminated while rendering a delightful client experience, discoverability on the web, higher accessibility, low development cost, cross-platform availability, and more than that offline access to information.