Progressive Web Apps: for Acceleration to Customer Experience Next

We live in a world of instant consumption. We want everything in a jiffy, and that can be seen in the transformation of business models of companies, and in the way we live our life. From ordering food to booking cabs, everything is an app away. However, a flurry of apps for almost every human need has also meant that user expectations have risen considerably. And when apps fail to meet basic expectations, uninstalls follow. AppsFlyer, a firm which measures and tracks mobile activities, estimates that one out of every two apps installed are uninstalled within 30 days. According to the firm's analysis, the average app lost about $33,000 a month due to uninstalls. While these figures may vary, every uninstall costs a lot of money and effort lost for the company developing it.

With app fatigue setting in customers, it is time for enterprises to look at Progressive Web Apps (PWAs). Progressive Web Apps take the best features or characteristics of a native mobile app and a highly responsive minimalist website. PWAs provide an app-like user interface and provide quick page load speeds. As they do not need to be downloaded, they never crash as mobile apps do.

First announced by Google, it has now been adopted by many big brands, who have gained significantly from deploying PWAs. Research analysts are naturally bullish on PWAs. For instance, Gartner predicts that PWAs will represent 50% of web applications by the end of 2020.

For an enterprise, PWAs are hugely beneficial as they are cost-efficient. While mobile apps need to be developed for different platforms, PWAs can be used on any platform. From a development and testing point of view, this saves a lot of time and effort and manpower too. PWAs typically use less data and can operate on slower networks. PWAs are also updated just like a web page is, which helps in ensuring that all users have the same updated version, compared to apps. This helps in reducing the cost of support and eliminating user frustration caused by apps that crash frequently due to version changes.

PWAs are also inherently more secure as they can be accessed only through HTTPS sites. Further, PWAs can also be used to improve user engagement through push notifications to alert readers or followers.

The benefits of PWAs can be seen from the examples of famous brands. In India, the popular travel website, MakeMyTrip, got a 3x improvement in overall conversion rate, 160% increase in shopper sessions and 30% last-minute shoppers, after deploying a PWA. MakeMyTrip found out that the PWA worked well on low-end devices and on patchy networks - a crucial fact as many users had 2G devices and booked tickets in low-bandwidth areas. Similarly, OLX, one of the largest websites for online classifieds, got 250% more re-engagement and 80% lower bounce rates by deploying a PWA.

Similarly, Alibaba.com said to be the world’s largest B2B trading platform, with reach in over 200 countries saw a 76% increase in total conversions across browsers, when it deployed a PWA. Twitter Lite saw a 65% increase in pages per session with the site loading in under 3 seconds even on slow networks.

As one can see, a PWA can help in reducing time to market, amplify market reach, while being simple to execute. It is very useful for developing short and simple pages effectively like the ones, which are used for campaigns, inspections, polls, surveys, feedbacks, etc.

A Walker study found out that by the end of 2020, customer experience will overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator. PWAs are well suited for this purpose, as they help in increasing conversations through engagement, and are quick to load. With customers likely to spend more time on PWAs, they are a perfect asset for ensuring better customer experience.