Progressive Web Apps And The Future Of Mobile Web

The last decade has witnessed mobile devices have completely transformed the digital landscape. The development of mobile applications is influenced and surpassed by the importance of progressive web application development. The increase in mobile usage has fueled opportunities for businesses to re-strategize their online user experience.

Businesses are increasingly orientated towards progressive web applications as they are noticing a significant increase in customer engagement and overall conversion rates. Thus, these progressive web applications have been so useful to all the entrepreneurs to grab the attention of the users.

1.What Are Progressive Web Apps?

Progressive web applications are hybrid applications that are designed to offer a native app-like experience on the web to the user.

It looks and feels similar to a native mobile app, and will have all the benefits that a native app would offer. And the best part of it is that it doesn’t need to be installed. It is therefore useful for every user from their first visit in the browser tab.

As the user continuously visits and builds a relationship with your web app, it will become more powerful. It will start loading quickly, send permissible engaging push notifications and offer a full-screen experience as well. To begin with PWA you are required to hire mobile app developers who have excellent knowledge in app development.

2. How Do PWAs Work?

Service Worker is a structured feature on which progressive web applications are built, and which is defined in JavaScript files that enable caching content in the background. And it also enables the app to work offline.

During the development of PWAs, service workers’ requirements and tasks have already been pre-defined as a script and set aside. This makes it possible to set up programming elements correctly. In this way, PWA can load that content prior to the URL link has actually been clicked on.

PWAs work on both desktop and mobile devices using a single code database on all platforms. PWA leverages plugins, a huge web ecosystem, and a large community. And it is comparatively easier to deploy and maintain such applications than a native application.

3. PWAs vs Hybrid Apps vs Native Mobile Apps:

PWAs are the apps that utilize modern web-based capabilities and technologies to offer an app-like experience to the users. Native apps are built using different code bases  for the purpose of targeting different platforms.

Hybrid applications are built utilizing HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, and these hybrid apps are the web pages in native browsers such as webview and UIwebview in developing android and iOS apps respectively. So here is all about PWAs vs Hybrid Apps Vs Native mobile apps.

4. The Key Components Of PWAs:

• Service Worker:

Service Worker allows websites to download and cache specific files on the device. Whenever a user access PWA for the first time, the service provider takes immediate action, SW will not only download the first view but the other content in the background as well.

With this content already cached on the device, the site will load much faster. It will also enable a website to send push notifications to the users.

• HTTPS:

The HTTPS protocol is required to ensure secure access to the application, use service workers, and enable installation on the Home screen.

• Web Manifest:

A JSON (JavaScript Object Notation)  file shares basic meta-information about the app with the browser, such as the application icon, background color, name of the app, and so on.

• Icon:

The image that a user will see when the app is installed on his/her home screen.

5. Impact Of PWAs Across Various Domains:

According to vpnAlert’s Bram, PWAs have already begun to affect various domains such as online booking platforms, social media platforms, businesses, and all of which are turning to PWA. Some of the following domain includes:

Business: Following the transition to the progressive web application, business domain conversion will significantly affect the result.  If the web application has rich functionality and can be launched with just a click of a button then it will expand the use of the app and go to market delivery.

Media: Whenever the user will visit the website, that relevant webpage will be saved for future access to the local storage.

Online Booking Platform:

PWA has assisted different cab service providers such as OLA to improve their network connectivity and conversion rates. Apart from that hiring remote developers will expand your business with ease.

Social Media:

PWAs has assisted social media platforms such as Twitter and Twitter Lites in optimizing their web pages. Twitter has successfully lowered its rebound rate by 20 percent, while Twitter lite has also succeeded in boosting pages per session by 65 percent.

Hence, progressive web applications seem to be everywhere and will soon overtake native apps.

6. Why Are PWAs The Future?

Many companies are adopting PWAs to drive business hyper-growth and productivity. Tech giants such as Google, Apple, and Microsoft have come out in support of PWA. Today almost all browsers support PWA-enabled service workers. Even The chromium-based MS Edge browser also supports PWA now.

Therefore, this topic has now become even more heated and to catch up the trend one must extend the development team to keep the consistency in their PWA.

Undoubtedly, PWA is seen as the future of web applications and there are proven reasons behind it:

• Low budget
• Lightweight and easy to create
• Cross-platform compatibility
• Easy installation
• Offline access
• Streamlined & seamless integration
• Higher user engagement
• High performance
• Competitive advantage
• Easy to expand
• Easy to fix bugs and errors
• Quick installation on any device
• Native-app flexibility
• Includes push notification options
• Reduces data usage and loading time
• More security

Nowadays, users visit more new websites instead of downloading a mobile app. As per Google’s case study, PWAs are improving technical and commercial performance. Apart from this, you can also cover more users, by making progressive web apps SEO-friendly. Hiring an offshore remote team will also help you to reduce your expenses.

Conclusion:

PWAs have tremendous potential and are evolving into mobile web apps. PWAs are gaining traction in the digital space by eliminating many problems such as storage space, high data consumption, the cost involved in the development, internet connectivity, and many more.

Through all research, it appears that PWA is not only the future of the web application but the present. If you really want to increase engagement and conversions through reliable, fast and engaging user experiences, this is the perfect time to develop a quality progressive web application for your business.

Author Bio:

Nasrullah Patel Co-founder Peerbits, one of the leading offshore development team providers. He guided many companies to hire offshore remote developers team from Peerbits for their complex and customized projects. His years of hard work, dedication, and experience has helped him in developing profound expertise for a wide array of technologies, tools, and platforms. He believes in sharing his strong knowledge base with a learned concentration on entrepreneurship and business.