Progressive Web Application – How PWA Impacts Online Business & RoI

Online consumer experience matters today to businesses and the best way to offer one is by adapting to mobile technology. If your business really has to succeed, you have to bank on your mobile users.

Reports say, nearly 51% of internet traffic is from mobile users. It becomes super important for mobile app development companies to keep a tab on the trending technology and tools to improve their mobile user experiences. One such technology that no business should shy away from investing is Progressive Web Applications.

Can PWAs improve the business RoI of enterprises? Yes, say experts.

This post will walk you through the advantages and significance of having PWAs for your enterprise and how it will impact your business bottom-line.

What is a progressive web application

For those who would like to impress their users with a best of web and mobile application experience, progressive web application is the way to go. The introduction of PWA to the business landscape has transformed the user experience dramatically.

For those looking out for a brief definition of PWA, here you go.

It is a web application that uses the capabilities of modern websites yet delivers an experience of native mobile app to users. In short, you can call these applications as the hybrid between a web and mobile application. The applications ability to work across multiple platforms, offline features, and sophisticated APIs apparently will help these next-gen applications stay here forever.

Let us see how this helps.

No denying the fact that native mobile apps are a wonderful tool for increasing customer retention. However, the real challenge associated with these applications is the user has to download the app from a play store, install and update it frequently. As most users want it fast, the gap between consumer’s first contact with the app and using it really widens eventually.

On the other hand, users can access the PWAs through URLs or even through search engines without any difficulties. They are light, simple, seamless and easy to use. Above all, they are easy to develop and deploy. What else you need as a business owner.

Here are some examples of the most popular and widely used PWAs you may or may not know yet using frequently:

• Twitter Lite
• Uber
• Flipboard
• Ebay
• Pinterest, etc.

I know by now most of you would be visualizing and enjoying the experiences these apps offer to you.

Here are some interesting characteristics of a progressive web application that make them successful in the modern day business arena.

• Zero downloads, zero updates, zero install
• Highly responsive
• Connectivity-free
• Native app-like-interactions
• Fresh and up-to-date
• Safe and secure
• Easy to discover across search engines, URLs
• Easy to re-engage with users
• Seamless installs to the home screen

Why enterprises need PWA

As I mentioned earlier, your customers want it fast and really fast. Most companies rely on PWAs for this reason. PWAs help companies to load websites fast, make it easy for users to install, ensure reliability, and keep them engaged.

These are not the only benefits. I have compiled a few more reasons that make brands invest in PWAs for their customer engagement and business betterment.

Why should your users install PWA? I know most business heads would be looking out for an answer to this question. Every business needs two things: increasing the footprints of new users and the returning users.

While the native apps or platform-specific apps can benefit you with attracting new users, PWAs can staggeringly improve your returning users through terrific engagement. PWAs make it easier for users to complete the desired action quickly without any need for downloading, launching and taking multiple steps to perform an action.

By engaging your visitors with a PWA, your business can increase repeat visits, engage better for ensuring a longer stay on site and improve conversions significantly. By this way, you not only engage with visitors but also make them act fast without any discomfort.

Here are some interesting benefits of using PWA for your business.

• The average load time of PWA is just 2.75 seconds compared to a mobile landing page.
• The bounce rate of PWA is below 45% compared to mobile websites
• PWAs increase views by nearly 130%
• PWAs increase user engagement by 140% (approximately)
• PWAs increase conversions by nearly 50%

How PWA impacts online business and improves business RoI

No matter what kind of technology you invest in, expecting the best out of it matters, especially its RoI.

Let’s find out how PWAs will improve your RoI.

Low data usage

Cutting-down data usage helps a lot to control the cost. In fact, many companies have started to use PWAs to reduce the data usage and some have been successful. Companies like Konga, a leading e-commerce giant in Nigeria, were able to cut the cost by 92% according to some reports.  

Low development cost and maintenance

Just imagine a company that has both website and mobile applications and maintains both. This requires different teams to check the compatibility of the website and mobile apps across multiple platforms, OS, to ensure seamless user experience. This incurs a lot of cost to any company. In fact, many companies spend an arm and leg for development and maintenance costs alone.

However, PWAs are easier to develop and simple to maintain, because the company doesn't have to do two things but only one – i.e., a PWA. Provided the application provides the app-like features, offline operation on low-quality networks, easy installations. So, you’d be able to reduce the cost associated with app development and maintenance significantly with a PWA.

SEO advantage

Does PWA help SEO? Well, the direct answer is a big “no”. Yet they play a significant role in improving the ranking of your website. I’ll explain how it works.

Algorithms of search engines like Google, Bing or Yahoo, mostly rely on ranking factors for showing up or improving a website’s performance in SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages). Some of the ranking factors they check on are page load time, user experience, HTML rendering, etc. As PWAs are highly capable of delivering such capabilities, they indirectly improve your website’s presence online, contributing to increased leads.

Conclusion

PWAs are not brand-new to the business landscape but a decade-old either. They have been there for quite some time but only now businesses have started to realize the potential capabilities and benefits of these next-generation applications. Definitely PWAs are game changers in the business landscape and it is evident from the number of companies using the applications. If you really plan to improve your user engagement and conversions at low development cost, well, PWA would be the way to go. Be there before your competitors do.