What Are Progressive Web Apps?
In its simplest sense, a progressive web app is a mobile app delivered through the web. It functions like a native app and allows for app-style gestures and navigations. The main difference is that there is no need to download it from an app store. It runs right in web/mobile browsers, and is responsive to all screen sizes. With the help of lazy loading and pre-caching, a progressive web app is able to load instantly, even in areas of low connectivity. The app is also updated to the most recent version every time it launches.
Why do you need a Progressive Web App?
High friction: People don’t want to install native apps. An average user installs 0 applications in a month.
User engagement: Users spend most of their time in native apps, but mobile web reach is almost three times that of native apps. Hence, most of the users are not actively engaged. However, users are spending 80% of their time on only their top three native apps.
Less Cost & Data: Costs of building & maintaining a web app and a desktop site separately is huge. PWA can help in reducing the cost as PWA is responsive and works as both app and a website. This reduces development costs significantly. PWAs also use significantly less data and memory.
Better user experience: On average, an app loses 20% of its users for every step between the user’s first contact with the app & starting to use it. PWA removes steps, uses less memory on phones than native apps, and are proven to use less data.
PWAs help solve these problems. There are multiple reasons for using a progressive web app, but here are some of the top capabilities it provides:
- Fast: PWAs provide experiences that are consistently fast. From the moment a user downloads an app to the moment they start interacting with it, everything happens really fast. Because you can cache the data, it is extremely fast to start the app again even without hitting the network.
- Integrated user experience: PWAs feel and behave like native apps. They sit in a user’s home screen, send push notifications like native apps, and have access to a device’s functionalities like native apps. The experience feels seamless and integrated.
- Reliable experience: With the help of service workers, we can reliably paint a picture on a user’s screen even when network has failed.
- Engaging: Because we can send notifications to a user, we can really drive the engagement up by keeping the user notified and engaged with the app.
Scaleup Technologies has built many PWAs for our clients, and customers spent more time on the PWAs than they did on native apps, increasing customers engagement and revenue for our clients.
Check out some of the PWAs we have built:
Legends of Investing
Legends of Investing was our very first PWA launched to the public and is an investing application that converts complex financial data into simple, easy to understand investment metrics for users.
Mobile Order System
The Mobile Order System was a PWA developed for a client and allows customers to quickly and easily make food orders via their mobile phone, decreasing time to order and increasing revenue for the client.
Nlert
Nlert is a system that allows patients to request for different types of help and allows nurses to provide targeted help. Nurses can also easily check the status of the patients in each bed and prioritise urgent tasks.