Why should you develop PWAs for eCommerce?

With the advent of technology, users expect a great user experience, and organizations need to target their audience more rapidly. Here comes the need of Pwas for e-commerce development. PWA technology plays a game-changing factor in the e-commerce industry. It helps Ecommerce brands to concentrate on enhancing the user experiences and develop three times quicker than an eCommerce website. According to the reports, we can experience a vast development in mobile-driven commerce by 2024 and progressive web apps are the main reason behind this growth in mobile businesses. Here we’ll discuss the development of PWAs for e-commerce. But before digging into it, let’s have a look at what PWAs are? 

What are Progressive web apps?

The progressive web app is a combination of website and app features. It works and appears like a native application. It offers to push notifications, and offline functions and you can add it to your mobile phone’s home screen. Dissimilar to a native application, a PWA is a mixed strategy for making a platform that works like an application and a website. You cannot download PWAs from an app store but they are easy to use like native apps. As, for eCommerce stores, the main source of traffic is mobile phones, PWAs are a great solution for eCommerce.

When to Develop Ecommerce PWA?

Here are some of the cases from which you can get an idea of when there is a need to develop PWA for a webstore.

• To provide a great browsing experience for the mobile user.
• Need to focus on mobile users 
• If the store owner doesn’t want to publish their app on the store
• Store owner sees a decrease in the growth of conversion rate on their website
• The store owner wants to develop a native app for their webstore but they are on a tight budget

Advantages of PWAs for eCommerce stores-

1. Saves Storage Space and Data-

Users always want to save their internet and data costs, this is also true regarding e-commerce. PWAs are rescuers for eCommerce organizations. When an app might take 50MB of storage space in the phone memory, PWAs would occupy just some MBs only.

2. Offline Functionality with Service Workers-

Cache and service worker APIs are the USPs of PWAs. Service workers work in the background and are responsible for getting cache elements and sending notifications. They store new content in a browser’s cache and syncs local transformations to the local server. Hence, if your app users can’t be online due to a weak internet connection, PWAs would help standard navigation. 

3. Responsiveness and flexibility-

PWAs have a responsive layout, so whatever will be your device, your website’s design must comply with size and resolution. Great user experience boosts online sales and retains genuine buyers. Flexibility synchronizes with the mobile-first strategy relying upon addressing the choices of your targeted mobile audience. Mobile responsive websites have more chances to attract users’ attention and engage them.

4. Saves time and cost of development-

As PWAs’ architecture lays on reusable codes, programmers might use them again and again. Where to build an application you need to have different codes for other platforms. Also, the app must fulfill the need to get approval from reviewers of both platforms. If you want to use devices with different operating systems to target two groups, you should increase efforts, time, money, and resources. 

5. Automatic Updates and No App-Store Costs-

In the case of PWA, automatic updates work similarly to regular website updates that occur at the server end. This enables end-users to have an updated website app. Also, you have to spend subscription costs to the app stores where you want to upload the native app. A PWA assists you with swearing off these high expenses without affecting your site’s visibility. When you launch a PWA, there’s no need to rely on app stores and their terms and conditions. While a native application probably won’t be visible to your users on the application stores, a PWA can be managed by the search engines to boost its visibility.

6. Payment Security-

PWA provides payment security to e-commerce businesses. But, tedious checkout processes prevent them from completing an online purchase. Because of the integration of payment request API with a browser, customers can experience secure and fast payments. In this payment method, there is no check-out form and so customers can complete their purchase quickly.

7. Easy to Maintain-

If you want to develop separate apps for the play store and iOS, then you might need to spend a considerable amount for hiring a developer because the app needs continuous monitoring, regular error fixing, and up-gradation. Whereas, PWA saves money and you can upgrade it by identifying requirements for various browsers.

8. Bridges Gap between Customers and Merchants-

With PWA, users don’t need to download an app. Thus it lowers the cognitive load that users generally face downloading the app. As users get limited mobile storage space, keeping a minimal amount of mobile apps is the current trend. If there are lots of apps on mobile, it gets slower and clogs the phone. So mobile-centric businesses are developing PWAs.

Prerequisites to Build Ecommerce PWA

1. Create an app shell-

App shell architecture is a way to build progressive web apps that immediately load on your user’s screens, like what the user sees in native apps. With the help of app shells, PWA performs so fast with high performance. This is an important element of an application with dynamic content and constant navigation.

2. Service Worker-

It helps PWA to work in offline mode or poor internet connection mode. Hence it is the main component that PWA should include. This network script keeps scanning the system and it determines where it should download content from the cache or server. 

3. Manifest file-

It contains all the relevant data about the PWA-like splash screen. Splash screen appears at the loading time of the app that the user can see. It is also used to add the description of PWA, PWA name, app icon, and so on.

4. Push Notification-

Push notifications help to attract more users and retain the existing ones too.

Service worker and Push API is the main factor behind the functioning of push notification.

Primary Challenges of PWA for eCommerce Business-

Regardless of the benefits of PWAs for e-commerce businesses, they have some challenges too. Here are some of those.

• PWAs are not as popular as responsive websites and native apps so it needs some time to reach out to your end-users. 
• Designers design PWAs with expertise in app architecture and a high need for coding and website design.

• As PWAs are just half apps, their functionality is also limited.
• PWA can’t access user data like social profiles, contacts, media, and so on.

Final Words-

Developing a PWA for e-commerce businesses is the best option to increase mobile conversions. Simply, PWA is a growing strength in e-commerce website development. If you are thinking of building a PWA for your e-commerce business, consult with solace experts. We are here to help you through consultation and development of eCommerce PWA. You can also hire skilled developers of Solace Infotech for effective PWA development. Connect with solace and get a free quote for e-commerce development. We will be happy to help you.

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