We are living in a digital age. Studies have shown that if you don’t have a mobile app you’re behind competitors. Giving your customers value and staying in touch reduces your costs and increases customer engagement. A mobile app is the best solution to give you an edge over your competitors. 

Without a mobile app, you’re missing out on sales.

Progressive Web Apps (PWA) have changed the mobile landscape since their introduction in 2015 by Google. PWAs have since gained significant popularity.

This new technology has essentially taken everything that is great about a native app – the functionality, touch gestures, amazing user experience, the power behind the application, push notifications – and transferred it into a mobile web browser.

Essentially, PWAs are mobile apps delivered through the web. New technology allows PWAs to deliver an app-like experience on your browser. It feels like a native app due to the use of an app-shell that provides app-style navigations and gestures. Since progressive apps are built on the web, they are not tied to specific devices. A PWA displays seamlessly and identically on all devices, including desktop, mobile, tablet, or whatever comes next.

What’s more, service workers enable a Progressive Web App to load instantly, regardless of network quality. PWAs are designed to work offline and in areas of low connectivity. With the help of pre-caching, your app stays up-to-date, serving the user with the newest content upon launch. Just like an app, the user is able to save the PWA to their home screen to access it at any time. Making it installable, but without the hassle of downloading it from the app stores.

Native mobile apps come with friction for both the user and the developer. One of the biggest advantages of PWAs over native apps is the elimination of the “app store middleman” i.e. Apple and Google. For Progressive Web Apps, this middleman is completely taken out. There is also no need to manually update the app, as an updated app version will instantly and automatically be available to everyone as soon as you make a change.

Your customer is able to download your PWA without having to find it in an app store. Instead, a PWA is linkable, which means anyone can launch the app straight from a URL. You can share it on social media, email, text message, online ad, or link it to a QR code, and your customer will be instantly immersed in your app.

PWAs are highly discoverable. This means they are easily identified by search engines, allowing them to come up in the search results just like any other web content. PWAs will be treated with traditional SEO, so it gets indexed for more than just the app name, but also the content of the app. It will not be treated as an app specifically, but as a piece of content that can “answer” someone’s “question.” This is another huge advantage over native apps in an app store.

To put this into context, more than 60% of searches are now from mobile devices and this number continues to grow. People are actively using their mobile devices to find content, so imagine your PWA coming up in those search results. For example, someone might be looking for a salon in the area, so they use the Google search bar to start their inquiry. The search results will most likely show directories like Yelp and salon websites. If you own a salon business, your PWA could rank in these searches, driving customers straight from the search results to your app. This first touch is an opportunity to convert your customers. An app-like experience will allow customers to schedule a salon appointment from a UI built for mobile. It’s a seamless process starting with a web search and ending with a completed task in the app.

A PWA can provide the ideal solution for businesses looking to build a compelling, affordable and easily-adoptable mobile experience for their customers. PWAs offer the best of both worlds, they’re easy to find, use and share with all the behaviour and functionality of a native app.

PWAs are a hybrid of native apps and mobile websites, but how do they differ from responsive websites? Unlike “old school” mobile websites, PWAs are fast. 53% of users will abandon a site if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load. PWAs load instantly, regardless of network state, and provide fast-to-respond interfaces. This eliminates their dependence on the network, as mobile websites do, ensuring an instant and reliable experience for users. A PWA also updates in the background, so users never need to wait for new content to load.

In addition, traditional mobile websites focus on static information, while PWAs are able to provide users with dynamic functionality. PWAs offer an immersive full-screen experience, allowing customers to place mobile food orders, participate in a loyalty program and contact a business. It can also re-engage users with web push notifications, similar to native push notifications.