You may have heard the term “Progressive Web Applications” or may have an idea about it if you are in the ecommerce industry. Progressive Web Applications or PWAs are the best things to happen to the industry in recent times and many businesses are taking advantage of it to take their operations to the next level. It has allowed them to provide their customers with a brilliant customer experience instantly and boost their sales revenue as a result. Nowadays, PWA services are in demand because they allow you to effortlessly link and network with the target audience.
The ecommerce industry has taken advantage of PWA services and many new businesses have boosted their sales and taken their business to the next level. Right now, businesses that are mobile-based are the ones raking in all the money and boosting their sales, and PWAs have allowed them to do that. It’s because they are an extension of mobile development and we will be talking about how you can build a Progressive Web App for your ecommerce business in 2022 with an ecommerce agency Brighton and everything that you need to know about it is mentioned right here.
Why Use a Progressive Web App for your Ecommerce Store?
Mobile businesses have grown a lot in the past couple of years and that is all down to Progressive Web Apps or PWA. To put it simply, a PWA contains and integrates the features of a mobile application and a website. Therefore, it’s a website that functions and depicts in the same manner as a native application. You can work offline by sending push-notifications and you can also add PWAs on your mobile phone’s home screen.
However, this is where PWAs are different from other applications. They are different from native applications in the sense that PWAs have the ability to create a platform that can function as both an application and a website at the same time. Even though PWAs can’t be downloaded from app stores, you can still take advantage of them as an ecommerce business because you can make more sales. That’s because mobile traffic is more than half the traffic that will be coming to your ecommerce store.
Why Does Your Ecommerce Store Need a PWA?
A progressive web application or a PWA gives your ecommerce store a massive boost in sales and allows you to instantly connect with users. However, there are other benefits to be gained by a PWA and we will highlight them for you below. Here are some of the reasons that your ecommerce store needs a PWA and how it adds value to your business:
1. Excellent Adoption of Users
When you install Progressive Web Applications on the home screen, it will allow the users to gain a content experience unlike any they have ever had before. They will have a tangible interface and have the same abilities they would get from a native application. Therefore, installing PWAs on the home screen ensures that you can easily make use of them and access them at the same time.
When you look at it from a monthly basis, people don’t download apps on a monthly basis, and a PWA makes downloading simpler for you. Users only have to click on the link and then accept the displayed prompt, and after the PWA has been installed on the home screen, there are no further upgrades required to run it. The PWA also has the ability to update itself in the background and it ensures that customers receive brand new and fresh content all the time. That’s way better than a native application.
2. Push Notifications Boost User Engagement
Native applications send out push notifications to users on their mobile devices and PWA has the ability to do the same thing. People spend most of their time on mobile devices and if you can reach them where they are, you can provide them with a fantastic user experience by engaging with them. Notifications shouldn’t be random messages that pop up, as they are meant to be short messages that have an instant impact.
You can grab your user’s attention with creative notifications and get them thinking about your product or service for a minute. The same kind of impact on users doesn’t come from traditional marketing tactics, which is where push notifications come into the picture. You can reach individuals directly and connect with them, while at the same time boosting user engagement.
3. Faster Innovation and Reduced Development Costs
Businesses that are running on an omni-channel setup are mainly looking out for their android, iOS, and website setups. When you’re building a website, it can be tedious and monotonous to develop and maintain that setup. You can easily counter this by building a PWA to ensure that the maintenance, development, and marketing of other platforms are done easily.
It allows businesses to manage every channel from a single platform, which will be developed and maintained by one team. That means you reduce your costs and, at the same time, will be giving an exceptional user experience and functionality to your target audience, while you have an omnichannel presence with your PWA.
4. Faster Performance and Improved SEO
The main idea behind a Progressive Web App is to give users a seamless and smoother browsing experience. A PWA will clearly outperform the native and web app on-page loads and on caching. That’s because PWAs will engage with the user from the start as pages will load within seconds and it also takes less space on the business side. That means users can benefit from faster loading speeds, less data usage, and minimal storage space.
PWAs are also web-dependent applications and can be discovered easily by search engines. Any material within the PWA can be linked and ranked by search engines like Google, which is different from native applications as they aren’t crawled by search engines. One of the main keys to ranking higher is faster loading times, reduced bounce rates, and improved user experience. With all these advantages, it makes sense that you use PWA to climb up the search engine rankings.
