Why Your Business Needs A PWA
1. User Experience
User flow usually goes from searching with a mobile website – responsive version to receiving a suggestion to direct and download apps from App Store or Google Play, iOS Store. Finally, you will find what you need in that app again and proceed to checkout.
According to statistics, nearly 50% of customers who come to the website for the first time can easily skip the stage of suggesting to download the app to mobile because it is too complicated or afraid to consume phone space.
Progressive Web App is the solution.
User flow in PWA is a lot simpler. Customers can search items and make a payment on the mobile website, finally click Add to home screen to download the website as an icon for the next visit. The experience on PWA is similar to using the app on the phone. For users, this is an extremely handy solution as they can still use mobile websites very quickly without downloading the app.
2. Release Cycle
Release cycle in PWA is quite basic. For mobile developers, every time there is an update or new feature, they will have to update the mobile app version, republish the app to markets, thus, taking a lot more time and effort than updating PWA.
With a PWA, you only need to release the update once and refresh the cache on the website. Synchronization without opening the PWA is also developed. Twitter is known as one of the pioneers in the use of PWA. The app size on Twitter's Android app takes up 31MB, the iOS app takes up 132MB, while the PWA only takes up 600KB for phones. This is a great choice for customers who do not want to install too many applications that consume memory.
3. Operation and Maintenance Expenses
Operation and maintenance expenses are also a concern for a technology project. Building a website, iOS and Android app will require large operating costs with a team including front-end, back-end, iOS developer and Android developer.
Meanwhile with PWA, basing on website technology, the team only includes frontend and backend developers. While implementing PWAs requires less manpower, more skills are required. For the front-end team that is familiar with JQuery and HTML from the traditional backend-driven website development, it’s necessary to learn more about user experience on mobile apps.
4. SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
Another advantage of PWA is SEO. Since PWA is server side rendering, we can still optimize the site with SEO techniques.
For native apps, it's difficult to do SEO. It’s only possible to introduce the app on the website, link to the app market, or pay for advertisement. In addition, PWA follows the mobile-first design and design principles favored by search tools like Google, Bing.