PROGRESSIVE WEB APPLICATION

If you think in simple terms, progressive web applications are regular websites or a mobile site with additional features and newer functionalities give the user an app like feel or native mobile app feel. The best thing about progressive app is they are fast, smooth as they use service workers and installable that means that it can be used both online and offline and even in slow internet connection, thus successfully delivers an extraordinary user experience.Progressive web apps were first heard during 2015. The technology developed more in the later year and in 2018 progressive Web Applications had become the major competitor of native mobile apps.If progressive apps are used frequently, the shortcut to the website can be kept saved on the home screen. Since most of the information is stored in the cache, the app loads instantly. The best feature of it is having service workers running in the background which ensures that the latest information is cached every time the device is connected to the internet. The capacity of it to work without any connection is one of the major advantages of progressive web apps.

Why PWA are considered to be a web development trend?

Even though PWA is a new technology and many didn’t even heard about it, its features sounds promising. Recently the e-commerce website Flipkart had a 70% hike in conversions and tripled the time spent on their site after the development of the PWA version of the website. The website of Washington Post had a round of fivefold increase in user engagement after the launching of PWA.Although PWAs works less on iOS devices since its platform doesn’t support service workers, it helped in user engagement and conversions on all platform and it has been proved by Flipkart and The Washington PostPWA have a few properties which many native app do not have.

• • A progressive web app can make a business progress and reach the maximum number of people across all desired platforms with the minimum amount of development effort. In a competitive market where everything is sky-high and reaching your goals takes hell amount of time, the ability to grow your market becomes faster than your competitor can prove to be a great advantage.

• • Progressive Web Apps works quite faster due to the usage of underlying technology. This is due to service workers, which work in the background while the website is running.

• • Another interesting point of PWA is that now almost most of the browsers are automatically asking users to install the progressive web app when users are visiting some other website. Now comparing to any other mobile applications, when users install PWA’s, there are no extra download times and users are not redirected to Google Play or the App Store, but directly the app is downloaded in their device. This means that the progressive web app have its own icon on phones and tablets, just like a mobile application, but for that user don’t need to go for any App Store submission process.

 

• • Progressive web apps implements various hardware features according to devices, such as push notifications. When a news about the latest products or a blog posts or any new articles are published, the relevant information about it must be send through push notifications. This option is implemented by publishers and developers while looking for creative solutions regarding new content. The biggest advantage of push notification is that, if push notifications are directly displayed on phones, they are getting read far more than the ones send in mail such as newsletters or status updates on social media, thus having a chance of sales growth. Another plus point is if users having installed the PWA they get a reminder of both the brand name and products every time they use their phone while seeing the icon on the home screen.

• • Unlike the usual native app update practice, PWAs are updated like web pages. You get the latest version when you use them. No need to update them every now and then.

• • In a technology emerging market like India, where still there is low bandwidth, data comes at a premium. An app which is almost 10 MB when it is a native app, can be reduced to about 500KB when used as a progressive app.

Features for a Progressive Web App:

• • Since it is progressive It must be working for every user, doesn’t matter whatever browser the user is using, because they are built with progressive enhancement.

• • It had to be responsive that means it should fit in any device’s screen such as desktop, mobile, tablet or mac book.

• • Since it work with service workers, it had to work both online and offline or even with low internet connection.

• • The app-shell model is used to provide an app-style navigation and interactions.

• • It had to be always up-to-date, again due to the service worker update process.

• • Re-engagements and reconnections becomes easy through features like push notifications.

• • Users doesn’t need Play store or App store to download the app. It can be used from the browsers.

Helpful Links: https://www.knowarth.com/advantages-of-progressive-web-apps/ https://www.knowarth.com/best-app-development-techniques-native-app-vs-pwa/