Digital is in the spotlight ever since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. It had changed consumers’ behavior, with the majority of the sales now happening through digital means. Businesses are thus making strategic investments in their digital transformation.
With the advent of smartphones, businesses have invested heavily in mobile apps to provide personalization. But come 2021, mobile app fatigue has crept in. Application downloads are either on a new device or for restoring applications onto a device. Consumers are not interested and downloading and installing an application.
While the above is the case with mobile applications, websites have their issues. Compared to mobile apps, websites are feature-poor and cannot provide a user experience similar to mobile apps.
A solution to the problem came in the form of Progressive Web Apps (PWAs). Because of their unique abilities in customer engagement and customer experience, businesses are investing in PWAs.
Big names in the E-commerce Development Company in Noida industries like Alibaba, Flipkart, and others are benefitting from PWAs. Even travel businesses like Make My Trip, Trivago are implementing PWAs.
Progressive Web Apps (PWAs)
PWAs are a combination of website and mobile app features. They are essentially web applications with high functionality, high performance, and high responsiveness. In essence, PWAs provide an app-like experience on web browsers.
As PWAs do not need third-party permissions, for example, from Apple, Google and others, brands are free to publish anything without restrictions. They do not need to place their application on third-party app stores. Thus with PWAs, brands now have a leveraging tool across channels.
How PWAs Boost Customer Engagement?
As mentioned above, app fatigue has set in among smartphone users. Research shows that people are unlikely to keep a mobile app for more than 30 days on their phones. It is leading to investment loss to brands. But with PWAs, this problem is solved. PWAs are less than 1MB in size and are installed on the home screen of a device. They are accessed via a web browser.
PWAs gained their prowess because of their smart caching ability. It is what makes a PWA function offline. The core technology of this functionality is Service Workers that cache enough data to display to the customer to keep them engaged.
As PWAs are not dependent on the OS and the hardware, it delivers consistent performance across devices. And thanks to smart caching, they load faster and delivers faster performance.
The popularity of PWAs comes from the fact that they are accessible anywhere at any time, even when you are offline.
While websites and apps are dependent on connectivity, PWAs have no such problem. Because of the PWAs unique caching ability, some data is stored even in low-bandwidth conditions. For example, with a PWA, you can show users their previous purchases instead of keeping the screen blank during zero or low-bandwidth conditions.
With PWAs, brands can bring the best User Experience of both mobile apps and a website. They can have native-app-like interactions. With the development of new APIs, PWAs can access device sensors to provide a better experience to the user.
Just like in the mobile apps, a PWA can send push notifications to engage the customer. Smart caching plays a role here too.
Progressive Web Applications (PWAs) are a force to reckon with. Ever since their launch in 2015, brands are deploying PWAs with satisfying results. Many brands have stated that using PWAs has increased their customer retention rates. Also, PWAs reduce the costs for brands as there will be no need to maintain both websites and mobile apps. They can choose one and deploy PWAs.
If you are interested in developing PWAs for your brand, CHL Softech is here to help. With our freelance mobile developers, you can Hire an App Developer who works flexible hours and best suits your needs. To find out more about our service offerings, please give us a call.
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