“As per the latest research 48.71% of global website traffic accounted by the mobile device in the first quarter of 2019 whereas, with the maximum use of the mobile device in the world web traffic is rapidly shifting to mobile worldwide by 52% as per the Forrester Consulting.”
As per one study, 90% of internet traffic is now generated by mobile devices and the expectations of today’s tech-savvy users need is to have fast, light, app-like browsing experience.
An Overview Of PWAs Technology
A Progressive web App is an application that uses modern web capabilities to deliver app-like experience to the users. A PWA application is designed to require advantage of contemporary technology options that “progressively” scale back on devices wherever those options aren’t offered. It additionally permits the caching of information; therefore the websites are often used (partially or fully) in associate offline mode once net service is uneven or non-existent. This can be typically accomplished by writing the forepart of the website with a contemporary JavaScript framework/stack that clearly becomes independent from the back-end application. This JavaScript application will use new(ish) browser options to accomplish the same task.
Magento acknowledges the multiple advantages to the present and in late 2017 declared its efforts in building what is called the “PWA Studio.” PWA Studio can contain tools to develop and deploy a PWA for Magento’s forepart. Together with PWA Studio, it can return a light-weight (not feature-full) demo website. The immediate advantages are amazing in front-end performance and enterprises noticed 10X increase in speed of on boarding new Magento front-end developers. If you are looking for improving the performance of your Magento store, you can think of developing a PWA for your Magento ecommerce store.
It’s The Top Of The (App) World As We All Know it
iOS developers were the first to criticize Apple’s original web-only app strategy. Sure, it absolutely was attainable to avoid wasting a link to an online page on your home screen (using a comparatively buried settings in Safari) as Jobs suggested. However traditionally, native apps have had considerable advantages over browser-based internet apps. They also offer greater access to device hardware, higher perceived performance, offline capabilities, notifications, and discoverability via dedicated app stores.
Progressive internet apps are completely different. They are comparable to the “responsive design” revolution. A PWA isn’t one technology. It is a huge wide umbrella term for a variety of the newest internet technologies and best practices that may be accustomed to create an internet site or web app feel as quick and as purposeful as its native-app counterparts.
A PWA can:
- Be put in as associate degree icon on the device’s home screen.
- Access device hardware options, like GPS, Bluetooth, measuring instrument, camera, and therefore the classification system.
- Receive push notifications, even once the browser isn’t open (including on the device’s lock screen).
- Make payments exploitation on the device’s constitutional payment system (such as Apple Pay and Google Pay).
- Work offline and improve performance because of some advanced site-caching mechanisms.
- Have deep linking to any “state” of the appliance, very similar to a native app.
- Function across multiple device screen sizes—from phone to desktop—all from identical codebase, because of responsive internet style.
In a heap of cases, progressive internet apps aren’t “just as good” as native; they’re even better. As a result PWAs are designed on identical HTML/CSS/JavaScript platform as a daily web site, and it’s entirely attainable to make a full-featured app while not the necessity for dedicated automaton or iOS developers (or the considerable prices that go along with building and supporting multiple native codebases). There’s conjointly no app store overhead or approval method waiting since the installation of a PWA is as straightforward as selecting “Save to Home Screen” from your browser.
Examples of Progressive Web Apps
Flipkart is India’s largest e-commerce website that has billions of users. They recently updated their mobile website to a Progressive net App referred to as Flipkart lite.
Flipkart lite delivers quick and efficient experiences to mobile users. It combines the most effective of each the net and Flipkart’s native app.
Back in 2015, Flipkart briefly finished off its mobile website associate in Nursing and embraced an app-only strategy.
They found it tough to deliver an attractive web solution, particularly as a result of quite half their users were browsing through flaky or 2G networks.
Attracted by the new web development options and technology, they finally determined to take a position in an exceedingly Progressive net App.
Flipkart lite brought in some wonderful results:
- 70% increase in conversions
- 40% higher re-engagement
- 3x longer spent on website
Adapt the Cost-Effective Mobile Trends with Progressive Web Apps
Progressive Web Apps has become more popular with the new update released Magento 2 PWA Studio. We have tried to explain below why it is important at the current time and the task to implement them is all of the store owners.
It is accounted that 98% of the time of Smartphone users is spent behind their top 5 apps and the situation is going to remain the same for native apps. Ordinary users experience hesitation in spending time to discover, install and use new software every time.
Adapting progressive web apps with Magento 2 PWA Studio can give you 8 times of return against your investment.
Key Reasons to Use Magento 2.3 PWA for your e-commerce business
We all are aware of the great influence of mobile in the world and especially in the eCommerce industry. M-commerce (mobile commerce) has recorded dramatic stats of minimum 50% increase in online sales. Looking to the popularity of eCommerce and influence of mobile, Magento experts now gearing to advance trends like progressive web application
Users love to get native experience but 50% of Smartphone users do not have healthy memory storage phone whereas, the native apps occupy 10 times more space than what progressive web app will. It annoys the user and keeps the restrictions on them of downloading any new app.
PWA is gaining more votes due to its exceptional advantages that have listed below
- It is working as a complete replacement of native app
- It gives you the option to add on your home screen of the mobile from browser
- It offers reliable performance on the browser
- Fast loading capabilities gives native app live experience
You can more thoroughly and easily understand with the help of the graph below that shows the difference between the native app, progressive web app and responsive website.
Opting Magento 2.3 with PWA, eCommerce store owners will be able to manage multiple challenges that they face right now. Instead of just this one benefit there many major vital reasons that a merchant should go with Magento PWA for their eCommerce business.
1. Quick Browsing:
PWA helps Magento 2 stores browse faster and let the customers interact faster which in result helps in increasing the conversion rates to leads and sales.
2. Cross-platform affinity:
PWA is coded in HTML, CSS, and Javascript prepares a capable platform that runs across multiple browsers, multiple mobile platforms including desktops. PWA runs smoothly on Android and iOS including browsers such as Safari, Chrome, Firefox, and Edge.
This advantage of PWA eliminates the need to develop and maintain apps on multiple mobile platforms that make is cost effective adding more, it updates real-time just like a website.
3. Instant “App” pleasure:
Native Apps needs to be installed before using, whereas PWA is real-time discoverable and can be used via the browser that saves the energy, data, time and space of device to install or download an application before use.
4. Push notifications:
It is a myth that only native apps support push notification whereas Progressive web applications are capable enough in having push notification feature that keeps your customer informed about the latest deals, updates, and offers. Push notification feature can increase your customer interaction and engagement by 88% from which 39% converts into sales.
5. Rapid Re-Engagement:
PWA is a web-based application but it has an excellent feature of add to the home screen on the bottom of the screen to give you app like feel that helps you to enjoy repeat access without the need to open the browser and type in URL.
6. Responsive web design:
Google supports PWA methodology widely and its policy says websites with responsive web design will rank better in Google search results. PWA in Magento 2 allows having a responsive design that facilitates users and owners to have improved ranking and great customer experience simultaneously.
7. Off-line support:
PWA is a web-based module which definitely is of no use without internet, though what makes it BRAVO is its offline support where it allows customers to browse various products on your eCommerce website and can add them in the cart without internet connectivity. However, it is important that your customer should have visited the page previously. The order will be placed and stored offline in the cart, and once you get connected to the internet your order automatically will be processed.
8. SEO-friendly:
In today’s competitive world and especially in the eCommerce market, having eye-catchy and attractive website is not important but having a website that comes under the Google’s and other browsers policy to rank better in SERP is most important.
Progressive web app development company support several key points that complete almost every policy requirement of Google and other browsers that are listed below.
- It supports having a responsive design
- Highly reliable
- Mobile responsive
- Fast browsing
Business is earned from the customers but the mediator for both is a search engine where 88% of the market is covered by Google alone. As per Google’s announcement website with mobile responsive will be indexed first, this gives clear information to Magento eCommerce store owners to have a mobile-friendly supportive website to rank well in rankings.
9. Installable on the home screen:
PWA in Magento 2.3 can be installed in your mobile home screen or desktop and will show you up same as a native app icon. It helps the user in visiting the website directly clicking on the icon and visits that particular website without typing URL.
Implementation of PWA and Magento 2.3
Magento is the platform to build an eCommerce platform whereas PWA is a web-based application that works both ways like an app and website which also covers 98% of Google indexing policy and better ranking policy in search results.
Looking to the advantages and benefits of both, Magento Commerce leaders announced Magento PWA studio on April 24, 2018, in Las Vegas which comprised a suite of tools that helps merchants, eCommerce store owners to build an online store with native app-like experiences.
Right after the April announcement, Magento launched a new version Magento 2.3 on November 28, 2018, which has exceptionally exciting features that are listed below:
1. Multi-Source Inventory (MSI):
With the new release of 2.3 in Magento, it got the inbuilt feature of MSI that helps the store owners to manage their inventory and stocks from the admin panel. It also facilitates store managers in managing inventory without installing any third-party platforms.
MSI empowers the import/export process it also facilitates in integrating external ERP system. It allows the merchants to reserve the inventory and eliminates re-indexing issues during peak order time.
2. Enhanced Security:
Magento 2.3 has added an extra level of security feature to protect your account, personal information, password from hacking and attack by bots. Magento has added Google ReCaptcha and Two-Factor Authentication (2FA).
3. Page Builder:
This is the new concept that has been added in Magento 2.3 that facilitates merchants to create and review the content supply to several third-party platforms. Leveraging the intuitive interface, APIs, and mdrag-and-drop editing tools, and APIs.
4. Asynchronous API:
This will process API calls without waiting for a server’s response or a whole call queue to be processed. This functionality is available in Magento 2.3 Commerce.
5. Streamlined Magento 2 Payments:
This is the advanced feature that Magento 2.3 has introduced in the first quarter of 2019 that allows merchants to streamline the risk management process and payments by integrating Paypal, brainstorm, and Signifyd.
This is introduced to maintain the transparency between the buyer and seller, synchronize order and payment details at backend and prepare a detailed report on the transaction made.
6. PHP 7.2 Support:
As eCommerce is the data-oriented module where millions of information of customers are stored along with payment process, to protect them and enhance security and performance, the latest version of PHP, i.e., PHP 7.2 has been included in Magento 2.3.
7. Declarative DB Schema:
With the implementation of declarative DB Schema, it empowers Magento in installation and upgrading process. The new Declarative Schema allows developers to declare the final desired state of the database and has the system adjust to it automatically.
8. Cache Management ACL:
in Magento 2.3 version, ACL will empower merchants to control and shape cache-related actions along with extending and improving the access control list of the cache system.
9. WYSIWYG Upgrade:
The TinyMCE 4 is the upgraded version that is a text editor. Media gallery, widgets, and variables can be defined per website or globally. These can be implemented as plugins.
10. ElasticSearch Updates:
Magento 2.3 supports Elasticsearch v5 that allows merchants to integrate powerful search engine capabilities with their online eCommerce store.
11. The Magento 2.3 PWA Studio:
This is one of the magnificent updates that has been included in Magento 2.3.
The combination of PWA with Magento has accounted for remarkable growth in the eCommerce business which has made Magento commerce leaders say that “PWA is the future of Magento eCommerce”. Many eCommerce giants have experienced exceptional growth in their eCommerce business after implementing PWA in Magento 2.3.
For enterprises, the cost of developing a PWA is comparatively lower than building a native app. This is one of the major reasons why startups and small enterprises invest in PWA apps for their Magento ecommerce stores. Such apps require low data and storage, and they load faster. You can hire Magento developers who will build SEO-friendly websites to boost your business sales.
If you are new into eCommerce and want to set up a Magento 2 website or If you are already an eCommerce business owner but want to migrate to upgraded Magento version with PWA you can consult an experienced Magento development services provider company.