Things You Need to Know About Progressive Web Apps

The landscape of the web world is undergoing a profound transformation, introducing various concepts and technologies such as progressive web apps to address existing challenges and seamlessly deliver information to end users. This shift has proven invaluable for business owners seeking to connect with their potential customers. To ensure the seamless operation of your business and strive for new heights of success, it is imperative to enhance your online presence through mobile apps, websites, social profiles, and more.

Dedicating effort to refining user experience is crucial, ensuring that end users can effortlessly access your brand information and leave with a positive perception. This long-term investment is key to boosting sales and fostering growth.

The surge in mobile web users compared to desktop usage underscores the mobile platform as the new focal point for businesses aiming to capture user attention. Recognizing this evolving trend, business owners are increasingly turning to web application development company to create mobile websites that are not only responsive but also swift and reliable, even in areas with poor internet connectivity.

Most companies rely on native mobile apps for all sorts of mobile platforms apart from the dependence on web apps or websites. However, maintaining the native app, web app, the website and as well as establishing a proper synchronization is a much hectic and costly exercise.

Many developers were trying to fill the gap between websites and apps but all in vain, until in 2015 Chrome engineer Alex Russell and designer Frances Berriman coined the term Progressive Web Application (PWAs). Progressive Web Applications bought a revolution and relief not only in the development field, but it helped to enhance the globality of the business allowing it to reach the masses because of the ability to run in areas with low network bandwidth.

What is Progressive Web App?

They are sites running on mobile devices and have features similar to that of a mobile app. It has added advantages of modern browser features and can be pinned to the home screen of smart devices.

The behavior and functionality of the Progressive web applications are similar to that of a native mobile app, it can send push notifications, can have access to the hardware of smart devices and most importantly it can work smoothly even with poor internet connection.

PWA is the next big revolution in the mobile app industry. It utilizes the open-source community and lots of plugins from the web ecosystem.

Progressive Web Apps are applications combining the best feature of Websites and Native App. And as per the nature of these apps that they are constantly evolving, they are termed as progressive.

Why Progressive Web App?

We all are acquainted with Android and iOS apps that we have been using on our smartphones. These apps have become a necessity. But we face several problems when we are about to install these apps.

1. Are we having enough memory?
2. Is the app worthy to be downloaded?
3. Data consumption.

As per a recent survey, most people are turning away from apps, not willing to download and install new apps as most of the apps fail to satisfy the user experience and are worthwhile.

On average, every user has at least 5 apps that they have downloaded but don’t use regularly. Most of the apps work properly when there is a high-speed internet connection.

Now the most hilarious thing is that most business has a fully responsive website representing their brand still they waste their time and money to build a large size app wasting precious disk space and data of the user. The average size of a native app is 30-200MB apart from these regular updates are there.

With the introduction of Progressive Web Applications which have the size in KBS and automatically updating feature, the app market has revolutionized engaging more users. All credit to Service Worker.

Will, it is not beneficial and easy if the website does all work of an app?

We can summarize and say the Progressive Web app has the best features of a native mobile app combined with the features of websites.

In the words of its inventor Alex:

“Just websites that took all the right vitamins”

Powerful Features of Progressive Web App

The above figure speaks a lot about the features of PWA. Among all these features the feature of PWA runs perfectly fine in poor internet connectivity and we can add that it has offline features. It works smoothly in low-bandwidth connections. All this is possible because of Service Workers.

PWA enhances user experience and saves much of their space on devices and their data.

Brief Comparison of PWA with Native App

PWA being the current trend has some advantages over the native app in some important aspects and features. The figure below is a brief comparison between the Native app and the Progressive Web App.

Brands using PWA Technology

Key components of PWAs

Reading the above context related to PWA and its advantages it’s time to dive into the technical aspect of PWAs. The Progressive web applications have four technical components which provide many features:

The Web App Manifest

The Web App Manifest — a JSON file — is the first component that provides the end user with a look and feels similar to that of a Native App. The manifest empowers the developer to control the way the PWA app is displayed to the end user. (full-screen mode excluding the URL part). This JSON file serves as a centralized place for the web app’s metadata.

A manifest file helps the developer to customize the appearance of the app.  It can be used for defining if your app needs the URL to be displayed or if you need a full-screen mode app, linking icons and icon’s size, type and location, and a few other key elements which can be used for giving your PWA app the look and feel of a real app.

Overview of web manifest properties:

name
short_name
start_url

display with a value of standalone or fullscreen

To have all these features, developers need to link the manifest file in their header section.

Sample Manifest file:
{
  "name": "My Application",
  "short_name": "my_application",
  "theme_color": "#208075",
  "background_color": "#208075",
  "start_url": "index.html",
  "display": "standalone",
  "orientation": "landscape",
  "icons": [
	{
  	"src": "launcher-icon-3x.png",
  	"sizes": "144x144",
  	"type": "image/png"
	},
	{
  	"src": "launcher-icon-4x.png",
  	"sizes": "192x192",
  	"type": "image/png"
	}
  ],
}

To use this manifest file in your PWA app you just need to upload it on your server and link it in the header part.

<link rel="manifest" href="/manifest.json">

Note:  Service worker and Manifest are two major technologies used in PWA rest depend on the requirement of your app.

Service worker:

A service worker is a JavaScript file that executes separately from the web page and helps in providing the features of both native and web apps to the end users.

The service worker lies between the network and the device, enabling the app to work even in offline mode, synchronizing the data in the background, and enabling features like push notifications. As the service worker executes only to serve a specific purpose it has a short life cycle.

It has a mechanism like intelligent caching, syncing the content in the background, and enabling the app to fetch previously visited pages.

Push Notification:

Push notification has always been a part of the successful strategy for any app. Sending push notifications to a user increases user re-engagement.

If you are using Progressive Web Apps for your business, you can easily send notifications to the user even when they are inactive or have not launched the app.

Synchronization in the background:

The service feature is the manager of this feature. It allows offline browsing of the pages which are revisited and automatically syncs the dynamic content needed in the background. Sending a message right before a connection failure will be marked as sent and will be sent once the connection is back.

Offline work mode:

The service worker works on the caching mechanism and fetches the interface through the cache on a revisit to any page. The dynamic content which is necessary like the cart for shopping, and the history of payment is refreshed every time the internet connection is established.

The application shell architecture

The structure is such that the static content is separated from the dynamic content. The static app shell is once loaded and then the dynamic content changes when the page is rendered.

This approach of development where only dynamic content is changed is a great way of enhancing user experience. The whole page need not be loaded again only the dynamic content is fetched from the service worker.

Transport Layer Security (TLS)

PWAs follow the Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol. These are the set of rules that all PWAs apps follow while exchanging data to ensure the integrity of the data. The site is served over HTTPS which enhances and ensures the security of both user data and as well as of the site.

Key advantages of PWA:

The progressive web app has features that are interlinked and elaborates much about why are they in the current trend.

Eases Development

Companies who are specialized in building progressive web apps use a web stack for their development. This approach saves much of the time and effort of developers and is cost-efficient.

This is because the developers don’t need to build the app for a different platform, a single progressive app works on all devices and platforms ( Android and iOS).

Use without being installed

Unlike the native app, Progressive web apps need not be installed they can be added easily to the home screen.

The customer need not visit the Android or iOS app store to install and launch the app. The feature that they need not be installed, reduces several steps, and the customers are much closer to the process of launching the app. The more the number of steps required to launch the app more the loss in user engagement.

Once the PWA is added to the home screen, the site can be launched by clicking the icon added to the home screen of the user.

The tremendous rise in user engagement

The various features and advantages of PWA increase user engagement to a great extent. Research has stated that 80 percent of users pin their app on the home screen for easy use. This feature adds to its competitiveness as compared to the web app.

There are other factors also responsible for user engagement such as the simplicity of the app, the speed of access, offline mode working, push notifications, and integrity of data because of the use of TSL (Transport secure layer).

EndNote

Concluding from the above fact, we can very well analyze and figure out the importance of PWAs and what role they can play in helping businesses to reach and engage their audience. The features like offline working, easy sharing, push notifications, zero installation, and responsiveness have added weight to the PWA app as compared to the native and web app.