Why is PWA Important and
Why Do You Need One?

Progressive Web Apps (PWA) is a perfect blend of a mobile app and a web page. It’s super technical and latest features create an unforgettable user experience for the customers as it bridges the gap between a website and a mobile app.

It is a website that gives a mobile app-like appearance, where the best features from websites and mobile apps are extracted and featured in a PWA to deliver the best user experience ever.

Experts predict PWA to be the future of e-commerce, but why is that so?

Let’s have a look at some facts and figures that explain how PWA has made a huge difference for businesses:

• Debenhams, one of the biggest fashion brands has witnessed that just by adopting PWA, their mobile revenue increased by 40% and the brand saw a 20% hike in the conversion rate.
• Starbucks confessed that their daily active users increased by 2X after launching their PWA, while their orders on the desktop are almost the same as mobile now.
• Trivago saw an increase of 97% in clickouts to the hotel offers. While customers go offline while browsing, 67% of them come back and continue to browse.

Now, the question arises as to why PWA is so important and why major brands like these chose to launch a PWA?

Why is PWA important and why do you need one?
If you are not using a PWA that means you either use a website or a mobile native app. Below are some reasons why launching a PWA is important over websites or native apps.

Websites are not mobile-friendly enough:
A majority of users don’t find using websites feasible. One of the important reasons being, websites are not mobile-friendly enough.

No matter how hard you work in making your websites mobile-friendly, some issues tend to appear no matter what. Problems like slow mobile pages, unfriendly navigation, clickable elements not being optimized for touch, etc.

It takes merely 50 milliseconds (0.05 seconds) for a user to decide whether they like your website or not. And that’s too little time if your website is stuck or a customer does not find a CTA easily.

One of the most attractive features of a PWA in cases like these is that it fits in any form. Be it a desktop, mobile tablet, or whatever is coming next. It gives almost a similar kind of experience for the users. This directly eliminates the fear of your platform not being user friendly enough.

Growth in the number of mobile users:
Since the last few years, there has been a rapid increase in the number of mobile phone users where more than 60% of total internet usage is happening via mobile phone. Mobile commerce has been on a constant rise with the availability of online shopping options.

According to Statista, as of April 2019, the global mobile population amounted to 4 billion unique users. Where, the Americas and Europe have the highest mobile broadband subscription penetration rate, 97.1%, and 93.6% respectively.

Customers today choose to browse on their phone over a desktop which is more easy and handy.

So looking at the rising number of mobile phone users, it has become the need of the hour to have a platform that users can easily access on their mobile phones.

Having said that, below are some of the key problems that surface while browsing on mobile phones.

Customers hesitate using a mobile app:
Customers today hesitate using a mobile app. Research says people use 4 times as many websites as mobile apps.

The journey of using a mobile app starts by searching for the app on the Play Store, then downloading it, accepting permissions, and then finally waiting for it to install successfully. By the time the user starts using it, almost 20% of the users are lost at each step.

Moreover, it is tedious for the users to follow the complete journey step by step or even to allow the mobile app to access their personal data like contacts, pictures, etc.

A PWA is a very convenient option to rise for small and medium-sized businesses. As they often do not have native apps due to cost or time constraints. In such cases, PWA is the best possible opportunity where they can attract customers by providing the best experience ever.

E-Commerce giant like Alibaba has also launched its web app, while they already had their native app. The reason could be their aim to acquire more customers that are lost from the website or native apps.

Features of PWA and why you should have one:

App Like Feeling– PWA gives you an app like feeling and yet having all the website features.

Offline Mode-The offline mode of PWA is one of the most important features. It keeps working even if you lose internet connection and changes are saved automatically and simultaneously.

Better Performance– PWA’s are way faster when compared to mobile apps.

No Installation and Download Time– No more install and download waiting time with PWA. You don’t need to look for the app on Google Play or Apple App Store but directly download the app on your device.

Better Customer Experience– PWA enhances the customer experience like never before as it gives a similar appearance and experience across all platforms.

Rise in Conversion Rate– All the amazing features of PWA benefit you in increasing the conversation rate.

Conclusion

PWA acts as a mid-way solution for all the problems users face on a website and a mobile app. Therefore, making a decision now to adopt PWA will bring numerous benefits to the business. It is the best investment you could make for the present and future as PWA is trending all over the e-commerce space.

How can i95Dev help you?
We have a successful history of serving over 180+ clients across Retail, Manufacturing, Distribution, and Wholesale Trade & others and we specialize in Headless Commerce- Magento PWA.

The Magento PWA is a pack of developer tools with the latest technical stack that involves ReactJS, Redux, GraphQL, Apollo, and webpack. It also provides tools like PWA-buildpack CLI tools, Peregrine hooks and components, Venia store and visual components, and UPWARD-JS.

If you haven’t yet made up your mind to go for a PWA, talk to our experts now, and get a free consultation!