Your FREE Technical Guide To Progressive Web App Development

Whether you are playing sports, leading a company or making a movie, your rivalries and challengers always seem to make things more interesting and engaging. In this tech-savvy era, mobile applications and websites are two of the most prominent competitors in the IT industry. Ever since the mobile devices came into the market, big brands and MNCs have been developing mobile apps to curtail the utilization of their nimble yet janky websites. Unfortunately, they later realized that mobile apps are quite sluggish and require more assistance as compared to websites when it comes to usage. So, in order to shrug off the feud between mobile apps and websites, Google decided to introduce Progressive Web Apps in the mobile industry in 2015.        

Well, many of you might have not heard of them yet, but it’s a fact that Progressive Web Apps (PWA) have become the talk of the town nowadays and are about to change the mobile landscape in the coming future. So before moving any further, let’s try to understand this concept with a simple example.

Have you ever come across a website that displays an “Add to Home Screen” banner, like the one shown in the above image? When you’ll click on the “Add” button, the installation process will start in the background. Once it is installed, the application will be stored in your app drawer. After using the application, you will enjoy the same browser experience, but in your mobile. Impressive isn’t it? Of c0urse it is!

So, what you have in your smartphone is a mobile application that you’ve downloaded from a web application. It’s really important to notice that you’ve got this app without using your mobile app store.    

Now, the case is: When you’ll open this application, you will be able to browse the content even in the absence of your internet connectivity i.e. you have offline access to this application. How amazing is that?

What you have in your smartphone is a Progressive Web App. In Layman’s terms, PWA is a web application that utilizes modern web capabilities to deliver an app-like experience to the users. To let you know better, Alex Russell, one of the renowned thought leaders behind PWA, has given a precise definition of this futuristic concept. Have a look: 

“Responsive, connectivity-independent, app-like, fresh, safe, discoverable, re-engageable, installable, linkable web experiences.”

I think you’ve got a brief understanding of PWAs and how to install them on your mobile phone.     

Now, let’s dive deeper and understand the key differences between native and progressive web apps, some recent statistics and facts about them, and why in opinion they are the future of web development.

So, without wasting any more time, let’s get down to business.

Progressive Web Apps vs Native Apps: Key differences

To simplify things and make them easy to understand, here are some key differences between PWA & native apps and a pictorial view illustrating which one to go with and why based on your requirements.

Progressive web apps: Facts and Statistics

Here are a few success stories from diverse industry verticals highlighting the significant improvement in their KPIs after PWA implementation:

• India’s largest e-commerce site, Flipkart, tripled the time spent on the site and drove 40% higher re-engagement after PWA adoption. 
• Pinterest immediately saw tremendous lift across several important metrics when they replaced their mobile website with a progressive web app

• West Elm’s PWA implementation earned a 15% increase in time spent and a 9% lift in revenue.
• AliExpress, part of the massive Chinese platform Alibaba, saw conversion rates for new users increase by 104%.

The above-written stats are more than enough to understand why PWA’s are the silver-bullet for various industry verticals.

Progressive web apps: The future of Web Development

There are a gazillion factors that make progressive web apps a cornerstone of future web development, but here are some crucial ones:

Offline Access to Web Content

A mobile app working offline might be astonishing for you but that’s a reality in the case of PWA, which is all about providing the web content offline. The core of the Progressive Web Apps i.e. service workers (JavaScript files) will work in the background and helps your progressive app to work offline, send push notifications and reload the content in the background even when the website is not accessed. These workers will gather API and use cache to quickly load your PWA.  

Seamless User experience

Unlike a native mobile app, PWA doesn’t need any installation, allowing users to directly access the app without any fuss. For instance, many of you have to go through multiple phases in order to buy a product from an e-commerce app store. However, that’s not the case for PWA. Customers can search your website through any search engine and immediately access PWA without any downloading process or hindrance.  

Improved processing speed

When it comes to speed and reliability, PWAs provide experiences that are consistently fast. From the moment a user installs an app to the time they start interacting with it, everything happens with the blink of an eye. A JavaScript file runs separately from the main thread in case of PWAs, which helps in quicker execution of code and faster load times of the application, thereby making the whole process a breeze for the web developers.

More Secure Interface

Unlike conventional web applications that use HTTP protocol, a progressive web app uses HTTPS protocol that offers the desired level of security to shield confidential or sensitive user data. HTTPS protocol prevents websites from cyber threats and inhibits hackers from processing information from the browser and prevents malicious code to enter the website.

Final Words

From the above-written stats regarding PWAs, their benefits over native apps and its future potential for web development, it won’t be wrong saying that these apps will surely take the IT industry by storm in the coming days. As per the recent reports by Gartner, an IT service management company, PWAs will almost replace 50% of mobile apps by 2020, meaning we’re only seeing the tip of the iceberg of what these apps actually do and what they are.

This blog post is merely an appetizer for progressive web apps but now it’s time to build these apps and integrate them into your ecosystem of customer touchpoints. In order to do that with full dedication, you need to hire a reliable web app development company. Debut Infotech is the perfect go-to partner when it comes to progressive web app development. If you are willing to discuss your specific project requirements with one of our subject matter experts, then feel free to drop us a line at [email protected] or call us at 1-703-537-5009. We’ll be more than happy to assist you.

Stay tuned for more updates…