When starting a business, and creating an online presence, the main necessity today is to make it flexible.
Customers will look for your website, arrive there through an ad, or just stumble upon it while searching online. And, they will use a wide array of devices: from mobile phones and laptops to interactive TVs. Today’s business environment is liquid!
The classic strategy to support diversity is to follow technology trends. That is, to create and launch app after app: CMS-based websites, native apps solely for Android or iOS, custom-developed websites, and API connections.
As every business owner, CEO or CIO learns by experience, this strategy brings longer go-to-market time, huge development costs, and mounting maintenance costs.
But in 2021, there is a solution: the Progressive Web Application Technology. It has been around for years, making it tested and stable. A PWA, or Progressive Web App, can be accessed and downloaded from any browser on any device. Its main advantage is that it will work the same on any platform, desktop or mobile, using a centric perspective.
This alone would be enough to include PWA in your next evaluation. But take a look at some other benefits of converting your site to a PWA.
- It’s a centric model. This means that you build once, and customers use it from any device.
- It’s fast, which will reduce both the page load time and also the bounce rate.
- It adapts to any device it’s installed to, as it was part of it all along.
- It’s responsive to any screen size: desktop, tablet, smartphone, whatever!
- It’s downloaded to the device: your site/app remains usable with minimal network speed, or even without network access!
- It’s installed on the home screen, like a native app.
- It uses push notifications, which are the best to re-engage users and gain loyalty.
- It’s available on all app stores, but not limited to only app stores, as it can be downloaded directly by the browser.
- It updates automatically, without the need of repeated downloads.
- The storage space is important, especially on mobile devices. Usually, a PWA takes less than 1MB. This means that it’s a quick download.
- You can use different types of content, from different sources of information.
PWAs use APIs to enrich and improve the user experience. They can connect with many other platforms, like linking your social media to a game.
This technology is not new, it was introduced in 2007 by Steve Jobs when he was introducing the iPhone. The term PWA was then created in 2015 by Google.
Some say that PWA is the future. And now, with the right development partner, you can have your PWA created for you for a reasonable cost. Isn’t this an opportunity?
As a practical decision-maker, you may want to evaluate results obtained by leading companies that already transitioned to a PWA technology:
-One of the main social media platforms, Twitter, switched to a PWA system. They experienced a 65% increase in pages per session, 75% more Tweets, and a decrease of 20% of the bounce rate.
-One of the leaders in online bookings and travel services, Trivago, switched to PWA: engagement increased by 150%, and conversions improved by 97%.
There are many other PWA stats that we could analyze, but just based on these cases, changing a native app development model for a Progressive Web App is worth consideration.
The PWA way is feasible for the two main initial situations:
-New business: It meets completely with the usual requirements to start an online business. It’s reliable, fast, installable, and engaging. And will modernize the way websites adapt to create a better user experience.
-Existing business: In the daily challenge to improve business performance, converting your site to a PWA will help you by:
- Making users spend more time using your service, as it’s more accessible.
- Reducing the bounce rate, by decreasing the page load time.
- Improving the conversion rates, by suggesting customized offers.
- Increasing customer loyalty, getting more returning visitors by providing an excellent user experience. Even offline.
