Progressive Web Apps and Their Future for Mobile Web and Digital Product Solutions

7 April 2022

Globally renowned brands like Forbes, Starbucks, Trivago, among others are winning customers over through their progressive web app (PWA) digital solutions. They have seen tremendous growth and improvement in their key performance indicators.

The reason these brands adopted PWAs is that they offer an exceptional mobile experience, have cross-platform functionality, and cost less to develop. PWAs take users from a slow and unreliable mobile experience to offer a high-paced and engaging one delivered through modern feature-rich web applications.

This is something users demand and Google favors when determining the ranks on mobile devices. Thus, the future of PWAs looks bright enough.

Progressive Web Apps & Their Future

PWAs are web apps that resonate and offer an experience similar to mobile apps. They are built using web technologies such as JavaScript, HTML, and CSS and can be accessed through web browsers.

You can migrate your existing website to PWA. However, the process of doing so is a bit complex and requires a thorough understanding of the same. An expert web development team can help you migrate and leverage the potential of PWAs to your advantage.

PWAs simply work better than your typically slow websites and offer an unmatchable experience just like native apps. As per a report by Beezer, PWAs are 10 times faster than websites and almost 90% smaller in size than a typical mobile app. They improve customer engagement by almost 50% and conversion rate by 36%.

Even though mobile apps get a higher screen time, getting users to download a new app is a tough nut to crack. That’s where PWAs come in handy. What users have to do to find your PWA is search on the mobile web. The best part is that no download of any sort is required from them to use your app-like PWA.

And if we talk about the growth of PWA in the future, as per one report, the PWA market is expected to grow at a rate of 31.9% CAGR to reach 10.44 billion USD by 2027 from $1.13 billion in 2019.

From this, one thing is clear: PWAs have great potential to impact the users’ preferences over mobile web and apps. Let’s see how they compare head-on.

PWAs vs Mobile Web

One area that PWAs have significantly impacted is the mobile web. Responsive websites that follow certain UI/UX design tips & practices are on the verge of getting replaced by PWAs. The credit for the same is due to the app-like experience combined with the accessibility PWAs offer.

Let’s see some more benefits of PWAs that make them the future of the mobile web:

Offline Usage

One of the great things about PWAs is their accessibility even when the device is not connected to the internet. They use service workers to cache assets and give users access to the content and functionality up to some extent when offline.

For instance, users can check the menu of Starbucks and customize their orders without an internet connection. But placing an order requires an internet connection.

Push Notifications

As per one of the reports from Google, 58.9% of users granted permission for service workers to send push notifications. Having such functionality is a considerable advantage over mobile websites.

Push notifications enable users to engage more with your brand and inspire them to use your products or services in the future.

Enhanced Experience

PWAs have an engaging & intuitive UI/UX, which is why their bounce rate is 42.86% lower than mobile websites. Moreover, they are lighter in size than mobile apps and websites and have an average load time of 2.75 sec, which is 8 times faster than mobile landing pages.

Thus, visitors are bound to get a wonderful user experience.

PWAs vs Mobile Apps

Due to the app word in the PWA, there’s too much discussion on comparing them with the native mobile apps. It’s taken that native apps are irreplaceable, however, PWAs have certain advantages that make them gain the upper hand in the debate of PWAs vs mobile apps.

Let’s see what those benefits are:

Low Development Cost & Time

One of the biggest advantages of PWA is that development time and cost are significantly lower than the native apps. The problem with native apps is you have to build two separate apps for both iOS and Android to make them accessible. Even the cross-platform frameworks do not offer the same performance and experience as native apps.

Thus, PWAs come out as a clear winner in this aspect.

Easy To Maintain

Maintaining native apps takes a lot of effort, time, and money. There are always going to be costs for bug fixing, additional server needs, or app updates that you have to incur.

The same is not true for PWAs. In fact, PWAs cost almost 33% less to maintain than their app counterparts as stated by Beezer. One of the reasons for the same is the elimination of maintaining different apps for different platforms. Since you’ll be maintaining only one web app, the process becomes easy and cost-effective.

Increased Visibility

Another thing that works in the favor of PWAs is indexability. Search engines are not capable of indexing the pages of native apps, which limits the organic traffic coming from the web.

Since PWAs are essentially mobile-optimized websites, they can be indexed and appear on organic listings. Through strategic SEO implementation, you can rank #1 on Google & increase the online visibility of your PWA.

Will PWAs Replace Mobile Web & Apps?

Even though PWAs are great, they are not a universal replacement for native mobile apps. The compelling reasons mentioned above are enough for companies to replace native apps with PWAs. However, there are certain limitations that iOS and Android devices have for PWAs. For instance, PWAs have limited access to the device’s hardware compared to native apps.

This digital solution may not be a universal replacement for native apps but they sure are for mobile websites. PWAs have an intuitive UI/UX design and offer a native-like experience. In addition to push notifications, users get the option to add PWAs on the home screen. This allows users more opportunities to engage and convert through your PWAs.

Final Words

PWAs may not be a universal replacement for native apps, but they give stiff competition to the mobile app development industry. With increased support from both iOS and Android platforms, PWA digital products have a bright future ahead.

So, if you are considering moving to PWA, now is the time to build one and grow your engagement and increase conversions.

Author Bio

Hazel Raoult is a freelance marketing writer and works with PRmention. She has 6+ years of experience in writing about business, entrepreneurship, marketing, and all things SaaS. Hazel loves to split her time between writing, editing, and hanging out with her family.