Introduction
With the inception of smartphones and smartphone apps, everything has changed in a whiff. Gone are the days when such gadgets were considered a luxury; today they have become ubiquitous in our day-to-day lives. The way we order food sitting at home, shop for numerous apparel and accessories, buy online groceries, book air tickets, and whatnot! We all have witnessed a significant transformation due to the evolving technology and what the future holds, one never knows but for now, progressive web app development is here to stay in the eCommerce development realm.
Today’s customer is, even more, smarter, they never fall for just beauty. With the aesthetic appeal, they require better and more engaging experiences, quick load times, great performance, easy navigation and the list goes on. Well, in short, they want it all from one store. To take care of or curb such demands, a new concept emerged, developing progressive web apps for the eCommerce store. As a result, more and more eCommerce development companies are offering unmatched services, especially in regard to progressive web apps.
Now, what is a progressive web app? Well, most of you know this term as PWA. A progressive web app is where the application is developed in such a way that it offers a native-like experience on all devices including mobile and desktop. Not only that these apps ensure to offer a user-friendly experience, wondering how? Well, here customers can have access to the information irrespective of their location, device or time. Basically, PWA is all about getting the best of both worlds, a native-like experience with seamless convenience. No wonder more and more businesses are found seeking out for reputable eCommerce development service providers who ensure to deliver the best possible solutions from their space.
Here I would like to mention certain aspects that make these progressive web apps a cut above.
- Reliability – Even if you are on a poor network connection, these apps won’t let you down.
- Speed – Speedy and smooth transitions can be expected within the app.
- User-friendly Experience – The overall look and feel of the app seem quite intuitive. And users love such applications.
The History Says…
It may quite interest you to know that the concept of progressive web apps wasn’t introduced by Google but Steve Jobs came up with this idea while introducing the iphone in the year 2007.
During those years, the usage of external apps was pretty much in vogue but after the launch, eCommerce developers began creating apps based on the website technology. As a result, more and more website owners began switching to responsive web designs where all they need is one fully-functional website that can be displayed across multiple devices such as Tablets, PCs, desktops, Laptop screens and of course smartphones. And this surely calls for the never-ending demand for Progressive web apps.
Now, have you checked the latest stats on mobile commerce? Well, it is expected that the industry has the potential to earn a profit of more than 400 billion US dollars by the year 2024 – all thanks to progressive web apps.
Now moving on, we will find out how these progressive web applications turn out to be beneficial in the long run. So basically here you will find out why you need to start looking for a trustworthy eCommerce development company for conducting your upcoming progressive web app development project.
Benefits of Developing Progressive Web Apps
According to several types of research, it has been proven that after the inception of progressive web apps around 68% of mobile traffic has been increased, conversions rates have increased by 52%, customer engagement increased by 137%, and of course, increase in page views as well. In addition to these stats, further below, I would like to mention some of the core advantages of considering Progressive web apps.
#1 Cost-effective
The first and foremost advantage of using progressive web apps is that it turns out to be quite cost-effective in comparison to other app development projects. Gone are the days when businesses were compelled to create different versions for different devices. Fortunately, that’s not the case anymore! Today, all it takes is developing one app and then using it over a wide range of devices. This surely reduces ample of time and energy and of course, the price as well. When you develop a progressive web app, the cost of development automatically reduces.
#2 Great-in-performance
Another interesting benefit offered by Progressive web apps is that it turns out to be pretty much great in performance. Technically speaking, here several aspects such as cache, serve text, images and other content are developed in an efficient manner. And this is the reason why most web applications are best in performance and speed. Not to mention due to this, businesses are found witnessing enhancement in user experience as well as overall conversion rates.
#3 Security
The next amazing benefit gained from developing progressive web apps is that they are best in regard to security. The main aspect is that almost all the PWAs rely on HTTPS as a result, this ensures high-end data safety and the risk of security breaches are minimized to a great extent. Here precluding snooping and content tampering is quite possible. In fact, it may quite interest you to know that most of the eCommerce development companies tend to use the web Bluetooth technology which incorporates different security capabilities.
#4 Small in size
Another intimidating benefit of using progressive web apps is that it is quite small in size. See the above Twitter example, Twitter’s native app is large in size whereas the PWA app is whooping small in size. This massive difference can be quite beneficial. In specific countries such as India, Columbia, Pakistan, and South Africa where the internet is pretty expensive. As a result, where there is a high demand for less bandwidth, the need for PWAs also increases as you can gain many advantages of caching. PWA is a massive need unless you have unlimited mobile data and can easily connect with Wi-Fi Network.
#5 Offline
Last but certainly not least, the benefit of using progressive web apps is that end users can even use the application offline. In today’s uncertain times, offline navigation is quite in demand. What if you are on holiday and you need to access some important documents? You won’t be able to unless there is a powerful Wi-Fi facility.
When you hire a team of reliable ecommerce developers for your PWA development project just ensure that there is a facility for offline navigation. In addition, PWAs work wonders when it comes to dealing with cached resources, managing networks, and enabling push notifications, even offline.
I can simply go on and on when it comes to Progressive web apps such as it is platform and device agnostic, offers the look and feel of native apps, eliminates the need for third-party integration, is app store independent, and modern web development approach. Now this was all about business. From an eCommerce developer’s point of view, progressive web apps offer an amazing experience. Here they get to work with headless architecture, no need to create a separate app from iOS and Android, short time to market, easy testing and whatnot!
Popular Examples of Progressive Web Apps
- Tiktok
- Uber
- The Washington Post
- Starbucks
Ideal PWA features to use to Enhance your eCommerce Store
PWA eCommerce can be applicable to any of your existing websites. Unfortunately, most eCommerce websites have not implemented this technology due to its awareness. Well, fortunately, now it’s your chance to gain a competitive edge in no time. In fact, according to Google, if a normal eCommerce website converts into progressive web apps they can find a revenue increase by 20%, right from conversion rates to generating more traffic and so more. Further, I would like to mention a few hacks that can assist you in enhancing your eCommerce store seamlessly.
#1 Push Notifications
One of the major tricks is to make use of push notifications. Even an ecommerce PWA has the potential to send push notifications and these notifications are no different to a native app. With the help of these, several businesses irrespective of their size and industry vertical can reach more and more customers where they are most likely to be. This results in a highly engaging user experience.
Since we are residing in this fast-paced world where we don’t have time to shop or show interest in new business ventures. Traditional marketing tactics with the time passing by seems to have become pretty less effective and today’s demand is push notifications. Since they show up directly on smartphones, you can expect your customer to engage anytime soon.
It has been proven that 96% of internet users tend to browse anonymously and they are least interested in leaving their contact information and email IDs. So why not make the most of this blind spot by using push notifications?
#2 Never underestimate SEO
As we all know that eCommerce PWA is web-based. In other words, whatever you try to create will be highly indexed by search engines. Unfortunately, there are certain types of native apps which are not indexed by the search engines. So when you prefer using progressive web apps, you can expect more and more users to connect.
In addition to being easily indexed, progressive web apps tend to have fast loading times, low bounce rates, highly engaging experience and minimal data usage. So in other words when you use progressive web apps, your SEO rankings are bound to improve. Also, not to mention that Google will favor your store over any other regular website. Here you can ask a skilled eCommerce developer to optimize the site in such a way that it gets indexed as well as ranked seamlessly.
Final Words
And we are done for now! If you want to gain a competitive edge in the eCommerce realm then Progressive web apps is the key to take into account. Over time the concept has been making massive performance waves and delivering the most excellent results for businesses all across the globe. So what are you waiting for? Time to make a decision.
Digital Web Services (DWS) is a leading IT company specializing in Software Development, Web Application Development, Website Designing, and Digital Marketing. Here are providing all kinds of services and solutions for the digital transformation of any business and website.
