As part of a mini-series on our blog, we’ve been discussing what progressive web apps (PWAs) are and how they differ from other types of apps, as well as exploring the user benefits of PWAs and how they can help enhance the visitor experience. Now that we have outlined the ways in which progressive web apps offer a modern, more intuitive and fast app across a range of devices, it’s time to focus on the ways in which businesses can save time and money by developing a PWA for their brand or product offering.
Below we have outlined the top benefits (we’ve also curated a list of digital marketing benefits here):
In addition to being able to deploy updates faster for clients, it’s also easier (and cheaper) to create and maintain a PWA as there is one code base, making version control much easier. When it comes to pushing the code to the live version, there is also no review process via an app store, which helps speed things up and removes the need to re-upload the app every time you make a small change! This also means that PWAs are not restricted by app store policies, which is particularly useful for larger apps with lots of content as there are file size restrictions (amongst others) when uploading to standard app stores.
We talked a little about service workers previously when discussing speed, but these scripts do much more than cache your content for later viewing. Service workers can additionally provide offline functionality to your PWA by saving data that’s been entered into the app on the device and resyncing with the server once the connection has been restored. This can be particularly useful should a user’s internet unexpectedly cut off as they’ll be able to pick up from where they left off without any data loss, which is why PWAs are particularly popular with e-commerce enabled sites such George by Asda, who enjoyed 2x lower bounce rates and 31% increase in conversion rate when they switched to a PWA approach.
As more companies see the benefits of PWAs through soaring conversion rates and decreased bounce rates, more support for features is becoming available across more platforms and browsers. Google Chrome will, of course, be the leader in this area however other browsers are quickly catching up, including Safari which now allows push notifications and also supports Touch ID and Face ID for PWAs. This helps provide the familiar functionality consumers have come to expect, alongside introducing new touchpoints and helps bring customers back through push notifications that can be triggered based on in-app activity.
Current trends also show that users prefer the immersive experience of mobile apps compared to standard websites, and that user engagement is higher for PWAs – giving your business a competitive edge and memorable experience that users will talk about!
While native and cross-platform apps may be limited in terms of user activity analytics, PWAs can take full advantage of Google Analytics, Google Search Console, Google Tag Manager and others. This can help paint a fuller picture of your users’ interests when they visit your site, as well as give you more detailed data about how users found you, which referral channels give you the best conversions, and more.
It can also provide better content recommendations through the use of first-party cookies – making remarketing easier and fully compliant with GDPR regulations and cookie laws. PWAs can also make use of chatbots and live chat assistants through plugins such as Zendesk and Tawk; as well as being compatible with lead generation packages such as Salesforce and Hubspot – making integrations with your existing software simple and consistent (without the need to retrain your sales colleagues!)
Looking to enhance your business offering with a progressive web app or mobile app? Email contact@zudu.co.uk to book a consultation to get the ball rolling for your next project.
