Progressive Web Apps - PWAs

Going through digital marketing articles, I came across trends of Progressive web apps or PWAs. This is a relatively new digital marketing trend in that it started in 2018 with large companies like Twitter, The Financial Times, Flipkart, Wikipedia, and with great results. Treebo launched a PWA and saw 4 times increase in conversion rate year-over-year. Conversion rates for repeat users saw 3 times increase. Petlove's PWA resulted in a 2.8x increase in conversion and a 2.8x increase in the website’s time. According to the article, PWAs will become lucrative in 2021 and beyond for smaller businesses as well. Having a mobile site or ideally, a responsive site can help the user experience, but even then there can be hiccups. And a site that is lagging or difficult to navigate in the slightest will still leave a bitter taste in a customer’s mouth, leading to a missed opportunity or even a tarnished reputation. With the large influx of customers on mobile, Progressive Web Apps, which are an amalgamation of the benefits of browsing on a mobile browser and mobile app, are increasing in appeal. However, when it comes to reliability, a web app is only as reliable as its network connection. If you have a slow or uncertain connection, the PWA might also load or function slowly. If the network connection is strong, the PWA will perform very smoothly. A PWA that is reliable and fast will be able to keep users engaged. It does this by efficiently and quickly responding to their requests.

With PWAs, it is relatively much easier for anybody to find you as compared to traditional mobile apps for which customers have to go to the app store and search. All they need to do is search for you on Google, and they will be directed to the website. The website immediately launched into a PWA, with no downloading and no waiting. The user also does not have to factor in the usage of additional data for downloading purposes. Most importantly, you prevent the user from getting lost in the App Store and directly guide them to your official website. The web browsers also provide an option wherein you can save the PWA on your home screen as a shortcut so that you can access it instantly. The PWA will then ping you with push notifications as well, should you agree to that. So, it is safe to say that you get all the flexibility of a native app with a PWA without installing it.