Why you should move your Ecommerce to Progressive Web Apps
If you’re in the software development world, you’ve heard of progressive web apps, aka PWAs. The most notable among them are Twitter, Trivago, Alibaba, and Walmart. With minimum required investments and a faster time-to-market, merchants can start to change the user experience on mobile and desktop devices, increasing conversion rates – making this a can’t-miss technology for e-commerce businesses.
What is a Progressive Web App?
Progressive Web Application (PWA) is a web application that combines the functions of native apps and website accessibility, all while not requiring any app store involvement. Like native apps, PWAs are incredibly fast and can work offline, send push notifications, and access device hardware. PWAs have been designed, so they are incredibly fast, reliable, and highly engaging.
The Benefits of PWAs for Ecommerce
The majority of e-commerce websites are not using PWAs yet, so you can have a fantastic opportunity to keep ahead of the competition by adopting these technologies.
Reduced Development Costs
Omnichannel, multiplatform strategy requires building, maintaining, and promoting up to 4 systems: website, Android app, iOS apps, and Windows 10 native apps. A PWA eliminates the necessity to develop multiple platforms and provides a unique opportunity to serve all channels from one platform built, maintained, and serviced by one team. This also reduces time to market as you deal with one PWA instead of multiple apps and sites.
SEO-Friendly
Search engines can easily index PWAs as they have URLs. Superfast loading times, reduced bouncing rates, minimum data usage, and highly engaging experiences are, by default, boosters for SEO rankings. Google will rank PWA’s higher than any other regular website.
Increased Conversion Rates
PWAs present considerable opportunities to deliver better user experiences. PWAs are faster, leaner, slicker, and the user feels it. From instant home screen background loading to full-screen browsing, instant page loads, and minimal device space usage. According to insight from top CRO agency Conversionrate.store, enhancements like simplified forms and one-click payment options can make a big difference considering that as many as 21% of abandoned shopping carts end up that way because of a complicated checkout process.
Excellent instant performance
Improved website performance impacts positively on conversion, user experience, and retention rates. PWAs are by design built for extraordinarily smooth and fast user experiences. PWAs respond quickly to user interactions; they load within 1 second, providing an authentic speed experience and engaging the user right from the start.
Also, Progressive Web Apps require less disk space on your server and the user’s device, which provides faster loading times, less data usage, and less required storage space.
Better user adoption on the home screen
PWA provides a highly engaging user experience with the same capabilities as native apps. Progressive Web Apps can be installed on the home screen, making them directly accessible to users. After the PWA is installed on the home screen, you don’t need to do further updates.
PWAs are automatically updated in the background, and your audience always gets to see the most recent content.
Boosting user engagement with push notifications
PWA allows sending Push Notifications to mobile devices. You can reach your audience directly on their mobile device, creating a highly engaging user experience in a very intuitive way.
Final Thoughts
Any eCommerce store should consider delivering its services as a standard online store and as a Progressive Web app. If you are not there already, it’s time to go full PWA or at least to start with Push Notifications. VT Labs is helping brands rise to the challenge. Contact us via our website, and we will help you to build a PWA.
