Mobile and web apps are helping businesses to create a successful and engaging online presence. They are using native apps to provide personalized user experience and developing web apps to offer universal online availability.
However, the one issue businesses face with native apps is that these apps are expensive to develop and often use a significant amount of data and storage. Similarly, web apps are not delivering the experience desired by today’s on-the-go users. Therefore, to deal with such challenges, a large number of companies have started adopting progressive web applications (PWAs) to retain their mobile customers.
Progressive web apps (PWAs)
PWAs are mobile-friendly websites that can do almost everything a native app can. They are install-able and accessible from the home screen, and you do not need to download them in your phone storage.
Difference between PWAs and regular web apps?
The main difference is that a PWA has the characteristics of a native application such as offline availability, push notifications, and device hardware access for offering a superb user experience.
Advantages of PWAs have over regular web apps:
Native-like Experience
PWAs run on web technologies just like a regular web app, but they provide better user experience and functionality. They load in a web browser like web pages but offer rich interactivity via their native-like look and feel. They create such a seamless and integrated user experience that sometimes it is tough to differentiate whether you are using a PWA or a native mobile app. For example, social networking sites like Twitter, Pinterest, and Facebook have blurred the lines between native and web experience by creating highly responsive PWAs for their users.
Ease of Access
PWAs do not demand longer download time and can be installed by a link. This process cuts down the number of steps to install and use the application, helping the business to increase the acceptance among users. The app comes in the form of an interactive website and is available to everyone with internet access and a browser. Unlike regular web apps, you can start using a PWA immediately as it provides the option of adding the app icon on your home screen.
Offline Availability
PWAs can work offline, allowing the users to keep on browsing even without an internet connection. They can access any content they have previously visited at least once on their app. On the other hand, regular web apps have all data saved on a remote server, which means your phone needs to be connected with a network to browse the content. PWAs save the website’s cache to make it possible for the users to access all the content in case of poor or no connectivity.
Push Notifications
Push notifications are one of the key reasons why many businesses are choosing PWAs over regular web apps. When you notify the customers about services and offers on their mobile app, it attracts significantly more engagement than traditional methods like email. Also, these apps can take advantage of different device features like camera, data storage, GPS to deliver targeted push notifications. In simpler words, PWAs let you maintain high user engagement to ensure that your business enjoys a high retention rate.
Automatic Updation
One of the key advantages of PWAs is that these apps get updated on their own. They make it easier for businesses to provide the automatic updation of all functionalities quickly and more conveniently. The new updates and features can be added remotely by the development team. Users do not need to update a PWA manually because when they relaunch the app; all the updates are downloaded and updated automatically.
PWAs are arguably the next step in the web app interaction and functionality. These apps make the process of accessing app functions more convenient for users. This technology is quickly becoming a dominant force in mobile app development, and you can offer a seamless user experience to your customers by creating a progressive web app for your business.
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