Over the last few years, smartphone usage has increased exponentially. Nearly everyone in the world has a smartphone and comes in contact with Progressive web apps and they might not know it. In a report from Statista, the number of smartphone users worldwide is expected to surpass five billion by the year 2019. This is no surprise. Smartphones are a convenient tool to access information from anywhere, at any time. In fact, you might even be reading this blog post on your smartphone directly from a progressive web app and you might not even know it!
Unfortunately, as smartphone use has increased, what we call native apps (or regular mobile apps) have become increasingly cumbersome. Native mobile apps often struggle with compatibility issues, or they might need plugins or installations to work properly. Native apps are a dying breed, according to statistics made out by Gartner, less than 1 in 10.000 apps are actually profitable.
The Best of Both Worlds
Websites are faster than native mobile apps and require a minimum amount of mobile space. In 2019 we’re going to need a solution that combines the best from the two worlds; the best of the web, and the best of the native app. This solution is the Progressive Web App.
What Are Progressive Web Apps ?
A PWA is an app that looks and acts like a native Android or iOS app, but instead of being downloaded on your phone, it is accessed through the browser like a website. Despite this, it still has the push notifications and navigation used with native apps.
Why You Should Get on Board
1) PWAs don’t require mobile space.
Because PWAs are hosted exclusively on web servers, they do not require mobile space the way native apps do. PWAs don’t require you to download an app, although, if you want easier access, both iOS and Android lets you save PWAs as an icon on your home screen.
2) PWAs don’t require internet service.
Instead, they load almost instantly, saving the information you last entered in the app. Because of this, PWAs work offline, or even on sketchy internet connections. PWAs have proxy servers acting as a middleman between the app, browser, and network. Service workers cache the actual response, rather than caching the response data. Because of this, they have remarkably few connectivity issues, giving you a seamless connection to the network.
3) PWAs save you money on downloads.
PWAs are great for those smartphone users who have to pay per MB for their downloads, or for those who have old phones. If a user can’t, or don’t want to be on a native app based operating system, they don’t have to. PWAs were developed to solve common problems with native mobile apps and mobile websites.
4) PWAs are highly linkable.
Just like a website, each page of a PWA has a unique URL. It’s easy for users to bookmark these pages, open them in a new browser window, or share them on social media. Because PWAs use HTML for preloaded content and meta tags, search engines can easily index them. This makes PWAs highly discoverable.
Twitter Lite
When Twitter announced their own PWA, Twitter Lite, they promised reduced loading time and reduced data consumption. The PWA was an instant hit among the more than 328 million Twitter users (active monthly). Twitter reported impressive statistics when comparing their PWA to their native Twitter app, like a 65% increase in pages per session, a 75% increase in Tweets sent, and a 20% decrease in bounce rate. Other companies that have launched their own PWAs include The Financial Times, aliExpress, Alibaba, Forbes, Medium, Flipboard, Snapdeal, GitHub Explorer, Offline Wikipedia, and Tinder.
There is no doubt, Progressive Web Apps are the future. In fact, it will likely be the standard for the next generation of web and mobile users. And after reading about the benefits, it doesn’t really come as a surprise, does it?
