FAQ: What should you know about Progressive Web Apps today?

While attending eCommerce events worldwide, we get loads of questions concerning Progressive Web Apps.

Let’s see what people usually ask while talking about PWAs.

Why is there so much discussion about PWA? Isn’t it just another standard?

The PWA is an entirely new approach for designing apps. For the user, they might appear just like traditional apps or native mobile apps, but they’re not as they work on a modern browser in the backend. 

The benefits: increased speed, working offline and lower maintenance cost (you get one app that works on desktop and mobile devices). What’s more, there is no need for additional mobile apps.

How fast can a PWA be?

Very fast :). Let’s take VueStorefront as an example: the full page load + rendering when the local (device storage) is empty is 2 seconds or less.

Then, after data is cached via service workers and indexed, the typical response time for user action / subsequent page load times are well under 0.3s which is an extreme result compared to typical websites.

Separating backend and frontend allows for short loading and rendering times. Doing that for La Nature, developers decreased: switching catalog pages time by up to 0.1 second and catalog first loading time (providing the visible part of the catalog with images) by up to 1.5 second.

Everything is so fast thanks to the offline support – basically, no network requests are executed after the working set is downloaded to your device memory.

If we compare the development cost of a traditional Magento 2 webshop with the PWA demo, it would be 3 times faster to develop. Also, the page speed is insanely fast and it looks like Google is really liking it. We experienced that our pages and blogs are indexed really high in the SEO results (top 3) after one week of publishing a page or blog – Estera Dugulan, Vendic.

How can I start to implement a PWA in my store?

Start with a proof of concept to check the business benefits of a PWA. With it, you can soft launch with your checkout still in your Magento.

Special configurable product catalog consists of 10,308 items in total. The Bitbull team (official partner of VueStorefront) started to work on the platform around 2 months ago. Their goal was to restyle and to replatform the online store. They worked for 2-3 days a week, having only 2 people at the time.

Read more: Proof of Concept —how to run PWA for Magento in a week

What is VueStorefront?

VueStorefront is a mobile-first Progressive Web App storefront. As a headless app, it can be connected to any eCommerce platform backend (e.g. Magento). It is an ultrafast and off-line ready solution.

What is the business model for VueStorefront?

VueStorefront is an open-source solution (MIT license). It is and will be for FREE. For those who need it, VueStorefront offers additional consulting and training.

What is the status of work?

VueStorefront is a production ready solution. VueStorefront is supported by over 470 developers on slack and 25+ partners including Summa Solutions, Snowdog, and Develo//design. VueStorefront offers additional language packages (EN, DE, NL, FR, etc.) and connectors for Magento 1, Magento 2 and Pimcore.

What about PWA and Magento1?

Haha! We got it covered with VueStorefront! Check how you can integrate it Vue Storefront Technical Webcast.

Why did you choose Vue, not React for your solution?

The Vue.js eco-system (Vuex, Nuxt.js ..) is pretty coherent. It’s fairly easy to choose the right solution. Additionally, Vue.js has a simple learning curve and it is easy to get started with. This solution has great potential and is rapidly growing. Read more to learn it better.

Can I use plugins?

Yes! you can use plugins by calling the Vue.use(PluginName). Vue Storefront is a standard Vue.js app which means everything that works on a normal app works here – including thousands of vue plugins and libraries.

Read more:

How to Drive Business Results with PWA