Progressive Web Apps: Why You Should Invest
Nowadays, everything can get done through a phone. People invest less money on laptops and desktops and instead funneling that money into the devices they can carry in their pockets. During the second half of 2020, mobile users accounted for more than half of the web traffic worldwide. This number only tends to rise. In fact, it is projected that by the year 2025, 72% of people will use only mobile devices for accessing the internet.
For you, if you own a business, this means that your website must be easily accessible to these mobile users, which means a decreased loading time, seamless user experience.
That’s when Progressive Web Apps come into play.
What is a PWA?
A PWA (Progressive Web App) is a substitute for a regular native app (the ones that you can find in the AppStore or Google Play) and a fraction of the price. The main goal of Progressive Web Applications is to offer a user mobile experience similar to the native app, with key native features like:
• Push notifications
• Accessing the app offline
• Installing the app on the mobile home screen
How PWAs affect your business?
In order to compete in the market, businesses have now, more than ever, the need to stay up-to-date with the latest technologies. That is because, in order to generate profit, you need to be in the same spaces as your customers. On top of that, you must provide a seamless user experience in those spaces in order to engage your customers through your sales funnel.
“68% of businesses that build mobile-first websites reported increased sales.”
Econsultancy
Because more than 50% of web traffic comes from mobile devices, a company that deploys the use of a PWA will always be able to reach more customers. Here’s how:
• They work seamlessly on any mobile device. Independent of operating system or version since they do not rely on an app store.
• Content is more easily manageable. Sending out updates to users is a lot easier through a PWA than through a native app – it can be done with the click of a button.
• App is searchable. Contrary to native apps, Google can index PWAs’ content, and therefore, contribute to Search Engine Optimization. This is a big plus since SEO has become more and more crucial for businesses and more competitive subsequently.
• It is cost-effective. PWAs cost a fraction of the price compared to native apps. That is because they take less time to develop and they only need to be built once – compared to native apps that require development for every platform they will be run on.
Fortune 500 companies such as Facebook, Google, Uber, Twitter, and many others have seen this trend coming long ago and started implementing PWAs since then. Twitter is one of the biggest PWA success stories. They needed an app that worked on every device, loaded quickly, and gave their users the experience they were used to. Here are the results Twitter had with the release of Twitter Lite (their PWA):
Things to consider
If you want to increase your sales, generate more web traffic, reach more customers, and create brand advocates, PWAs are a great way to do so. They are the future of web development and can bring big results to your business for a lot less money than a native app.
