Today's shoppers rely heavily upon mobile devices for shopping online. However, even after a great plus continuous shift from desktop to mobile shopping, businesses struggle with mobile conversion rates that are still lower than desktop conversion rates.
With this constant surge in the number of mobile users worldwide, businesses need to understand what their customers need and optimize their shopping experience accordingly. And that's where Progressive Web App comes to play.
Since the inception of Progressive Web Apps in the year 2015, many businesses have leveraged this technology. Whether it's about delivering highly interactive user experience or reaching new user segments, PWA can be used for many purposes.
With PWA, businesses can offer a high-performance experience like native apps. But before diving in and understanding how PWA can benefit online businesses, let's first understand what PWA is.
What is a Progressive Web App?
A Progressive Web App (PWA) is a web application that uses the latest web technologies for delivering a native-like experience to the users.
Typically, a native app provides users with a better experience than the mobile web, allowing users to interact better with the company.
A PWA is a website that looks as well as functions just like a native app does.
In addition to it, PWA can be as fast as native apps, can be added on the home screen, send push notifications, and function offline.
Key Functionalities of PWA
Instant Load Time
The most important reason behind the emergence of PWA is to provide an instant load time as native apps do.
By using the device level cache, it minimizes the data required for providing instant response to the user interaction.
PWA leverages the new-age technologies that let the app save the data locally in the mobile’s cache so that it can get delivered directly whenever needed.
In this way, when a user visits repeatedly, PWAs provide them with the features instantly by displaying the cached content and then provide the rest of the page progressively.
Offline Mode
A lot like a native app, PWA can also respond in offline mode.
It allows the users to keep browsing instead of telling them that they are offline and can’t move further as a normal webpage does.
Here as well, PWAs leverage the saved data in the device’s cache for handling offline requests and working properly once the connection is established.
With this feature, websites can offer offline functionalities for achieving a better performance level regardless of the network conditions.
Add To Homescreen
Just like native apps, PWA shortcuts can also be added on the home screens of devices.
This allows the PWAs to have the same accessibility level as native apps to keep it in front of the users.
This, in turn, can boost the level of engagement and hence, sales.
Moreover, PWAs also allow you to decide how the app would appear in front of the users by allowing you to choose the home screen icon, theme color, or color for the address bar.
Web Payments
As PWAs leverages advanced technologies, it simplifies the process of making payments and makes it more secure.
For this purpose, Web Payments helps the users to fill the payment form conveniently by allowing the option to refill using the stored data.
This enhances the customer experience and allows businesses to offer users with multiple payment options.
Web Push Notifications
Push notifications are undoubtedly one of the best features that businesses can leverage to boost engagement rates. And this feature that was previously missing for browsers has now been added by PWAs on the browsers as well.
According to stats, push notifications to provide an 88% higher rate of engagement and a 3x user retention rate.
With the help of push notifications, online businesses can communicate with their users in a more personal way and keep them engaged by sending them relevant notifications from time to time.
The PWA powered notifications are very much similar to app notifications, which means they would work even if the browser isn’t open.
These were the key features of PWA that can be utilized by online businesses to enhance their customer experiences and boost their sales. And now, we’ll be discussing how PWAs can benefit online businesses.
Benefits of PWA for Online Businesses in Terms of Customer Experience
PWA technology has allowed websites to harness a new set of features which was previously limited to the native apps.
Fast
It goes without saying that a slow website can instantly make users exit the website. And in this competitive era, this can hugely affect any business’s growth.
In order to provide your users with the best experience, you need to make your website fast and responsive.
Here PWAs can be highly effective because it smooths up the process of reaching the products for the users.
Once loaded, PWAs instantly responds to the user’s action without taking time to load like a traditional website.
It’s faster load speed allows the app to cut off the clutter and let users perform the desired action easily.
Reliable
With the emergence of PWA, web users are no more dependent on devices that are continuously connected to the internet.
A PWA powered web application can still work when proficiently even if the connection is lost, which is crucial when working with an unstable network.
With this feature, PWAs provides users with a reliable shopping experience regardless of the availability of connection.
They are perfectly suited for users who have an unstable source of connection.
It allows the users to keep engaging with the website and continue browsing, adding to products to cart even if they aren’t connected.
Engaging
PWAs come with tons of inbuilt advanced features that can help businesses to facilitate engagement for online businesses.
They can be placed on the home screen that lets the user instantly access the web app with just one tap, and this facility boosts the re-engagement rate of a native app.
Because of the single-click option, businesses can provide their users with an additional touchpoint, which allows them to interact with the business on their most-used devices easily.
Moreover, businesses can also enable push notifications and can send timely notifications like news, new product launches, or any other relevant updates.
In addition to that, relevant push notifications also allow addressing the top reasons behind cart abandonment.
Secured
When it comes to security, PWAs are secured by default because web security is a necessity to enable its native app-like features.
To be a PWA, any web app has to work with HTTPS to provide security and privacy to the users. And with HTTPS enabled, a PWA can ensure the protection of data like payment details, customer information as well as browsing history.
Discoverable
The competition is fierce is every field, and so you need to use strategies that can help you stay ahead of your competitors.
With PWAs, you get major benefits in terms of discovery and acquisition. PWAs can be indexed in the search engine results, which native apps can’t be, which in turn boosts the visibility of the web app.
As PWAs provide a native app-like experience after being discovered, it increases the chances of conversion.
No Need To Update
Unlike native apps, users don’t need to update the app for new features regularly.
All they need to do is stay connected with the internet, and the web app will automatically provide them with the latest content.
In this way, you can offer your users updated content without affecting their experience.
No Downloads Needed
Downloading an app from the app store can be a little long process than simply opening it from the browser.
With PWAs, businesses can make it convenient for the user to open an app without downloading it from the app store and use all its features on the go.
Cross Browser
As all the websites do, PWAs also lets the user access the web app from any browser or device.
Moreover, PWAs can provide users with a seamless experience regardless of the screen size like mobile, tablets, or even desktops.
In this way, Progressive Web App Development serves the users with the convenience of using all its features without worrying about the device or the browser.
Saves Resources
A major drawback with native apps is that you need to build an app that supports multiple platforms like Android, iOS, or any other, which makes the process a lot expensive as well as time-consuming.
However, with PWA, you don’t need to make this extra effort.
The same web app can be displayed in any kind of platform, which in turn chops off the extra cost of development and maintenance.
In addition to it, PWA also provides the same native app-like experience, which appeals more to the users.
To Conclude
With mobile phones heavily influencing our daily lives, businesses need to understand how to leverage them in the right way.
Customers’ demand for fast, engaging, and responsive web apps is something that every business needs to cater to. And that’s where an app is required.
With PWAs, businesses don’t just only provide users with app-like experience, but they also provide users with tons of other exemplary features, which ultimately helps them improve the bottom-line results.
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