Progressive Web Apps – a Quality Mix of Web And Mobile

Progressive Web Apps Brought A Lot Of Excitement, But What Is It All About?

Technology is evolving constantly. New products, services, protocols and features are announced on a weekly basis. Even so, some innovations stand up among the others because they make the way we live and do business easier and definitely better.

The public welcomes modernization with excitement and there is a reason why. The newest addition to that list of awaited new options is the “Progressive web app” which might change web application development fundamentally. In this blog, we are going to share the key factors that will make the progressive web apps a top tier web application development option.

1. What is A Progressive Web App?

A Progressive Web App is a web app that brings the app experience that we know by now from our mobile devices – directly, through the web. This basically means that we won’t have to install an application on our device but can still experience its full potential over the web.

Progressive Web Apps are bound to change the web app development business as they are dependable, agile and bring a smooth experience that is quite appealing to the user.

2. What Is So Special About It?

Every progressive web app is designed with very rapid load times and thus disposes of quite a lot of steps that are needed to access certain info or components straight from the website.

Something special is that these apps have some ‘intelligence’ that catches the behavior of the user, his preferences and that way delivers a better, personalized encounter. Progressive web apps do not require any kind of download as they are opened directly from the browser.

3. What Are The Key Features?

• The biggest advantage in terms of web app development is the offline functionality that allows the application to remain working in the background and ‘capture’ the behavior of the user.
• Layout that is highly responsive and navigation that is even easier than a desktop website on mobile.
• Push notifications that endorse the user to get the outline of any message or update that would usually wait for a log in.
• Web application development was always dependent on data usage so the fact that progressive web apps have very low data usage is definitely a good thing for the people that have to live with slow internet access.
• All types of hardware are accessible. This includes camera, microphone, screen orientation and geolocation access.
• Progressive web apps are discoverable in search engines as they are – simply said – a website. So in terms of SEO these apps are way ahead the current apps.

4. Google Requirements For An App To Be Progressive

• While using Google Chrome, the users need to visit the hosting site at least twice before the browser shows the installation prompt. With this verification method not every visitor will be blasted with prompts as you will need to show some interest.
• Having a secure connection to the progressive web app is a must. That way the user feels safer and also some safety against hijackers is added.
• A valid JSON Manifest should be installed. Providing a .json data extract allows the service worker to cache the information and use the app shell to load CSS rules that bring an offline form with the full UI potential.
• A valid service worker needs to be installed because it is in charge of caching all files, delivering push notifications, data manipulation and content updating. This script works separately from any website or application that already exists on the web server.

5. Some Cons Do Exist

Despite all good innovations that these apps bring to the web application development world some criticism exists. For example, some progressive web apps do not support desktop browser and can work only on mobile, which is not a good thing in our view.

Other Cons Include:

• Not every progressive web app uses links for their page structure that makes it undiscoverable by search engines.
• Insufficient native API access.
• No App Store listings.

6. In Short

Progressive web apps are the next big thing when it comes to web application development. They provide an entirely new user experience and are showing great conversion and bounce rates.

As a final conclusion, we need to say that a progressive web app is a blessing to a website but does not hold much weight SEO-wise.

Summary

The web application development spectrum is evolving constantly. What the user wants is of most importance and the new features are designed in this aspect. The newest addition to this line of products is the progressive web app that is orientated towards the better user experience.