Is Progressive Web Apps Capable of Replacing Native Mobile Apps
In the cutthroat competition world, where everybody is in a race to stay ahead of others, it becomes important for the business to mark its presence. But the good news is that to mark your presence you don’t need to spend a fortune, a big thanks to Progressive Web Apps. PWA has not emerged out of the blue. But this technology has been making noise in the market for quite some time.
What is a Progressive Web Application?
Wikipedia defines PWA as “A progressive web application (PWA) is a type of application software delivered through the web, built using common web technologies including HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. It is intended to work on any platform that uses a standards-compliant browser, including both desktop and mobile devices.”
So, basically, it is a platform that bridges the gap between a website and a native application. It aims to reduce the gap between user experience in native mobile apps and web-based.
What is the native application?
Native apps are applications that are developed for a particular platform like Android, iOS, and Windows. It is coded in a specific programming language using tools and frameworks. Native applications can be downloaded from the App Store or Google Play store from the mobile.
Benefits of PWA over Native App
1. Bypass The Need of App Store
There is no denying the fact that there are millions of applications in the application store plus users hardly scroll down to explore new apps. Even if your app might be highly useful, but without any marketing, it would be a total failure. PWA is more search engine friendly as it is after all URL based design.
But the same might not be the case with native apps as to download a particular app, users need to search app names in the store. PWA is an SEO-optimized web page, it becomes easy and convenient to find PWA on the internet. This advantage of PWA helps to save marketing costs to some extent.
2. A Wider Reach to The Audience
One of the major reasons that native apps are highly costly affairs is that businesses have to invest money for the different platforms based on their operating system’s choice. To avoid large expenses, the majority of small businesses narrow down their focus on a single store and thus losing the bigger opportunities.
While in the case of PWA, you don’t need a specific platform as it adapts seamlessly to different electronic devices, operating systems, and browsers. You can send your app link via SMS, social media, QR code without asking the user to go to a particular app store and then download it. Isn’t it amazing?
3. Quick Loading
Native apps take a lot of time to access as one has to download it then install it, give access permission, and have to do a lot of other things even after that. But PWA does not bother users with such time-consuming activities as there is no need to download and update the app.
4. Quick Development
The time consumption of one native app development is equivalent to three PWA development. PWA is very quick to develop and it comes in handy especially in situations like new product releases, off-campaigns, budget constraints, cross-platform compatibility, time limitations, and lots more.
5. Limited Storage Requirement
Unlike native apps, you do not require to download the PWA app as it can be accessed through the web browser on the mobile phone. This free, the memory space of the mobile phone and your smartphone will not experience any lag in performance.
Final Words
After the change in Google algorithms in 2016, stating its shifted search engine indexing Algorithms focus to Mobile-first indexing over desktop website indexing, clearly states that PWA stores a shiny future. Large brands are already shifting gears towards the future by going for PWA. What’s your take on Progressive web apps development?
