A Progressive Web App (PWA) is a web app that uses modern web capabilities to deliver an app-like experience to users. These apps meet certain requirements (see below), are deployed to servers, accessible through URLs, and indexed by search engines.
Progressive Web Apps are user experiences that have the reach of the web, and are:
- Reliable – Load instantly and never show the downasaur, even in uncertain network conditions.
- Fast – Respond quickly to user interactions with silky smooth animations and no janky scrolling.
- Engaging – Feel like a natural app on the device, with an immersive user experience.
This new level of quality allows Progressive Web Apps to earn a place on the user’s home screen.
Why build a Progressive Web App?
Building a high-quality Progressive Web App has incredible benefits, making it easy to delight your users, grow engagement and increase conversions.
ding a high-quality Progressive Web App has incredible benefits, making it easy to delight your users, grow engagement and increase conversions.
- Worthy of being on the home screen
When the Progressive Web App criteria are met, Chrome prompts users to add the Progressive Web App to their home screen. - Work reliably, no matter the network conditions
Service workers enabled Konga to send 63% less data for initial page loads, and 84% less data to complete the first transaction! - Increased engagement
Web push notifications helped eXtra Electronics increase engagement by 4X. And those users spend twice as much time on the site. - Improved conversions
The ability to deliver an amazing user experience helped AliExpress improve conversions for new users across all browsers by 104% and on iOS by 82%.
What is required?
To be considered a Progressive Web App, your app must be:
- Progressive – Work for every user, regardless of browser choice, because they are built with progressive enhancement as a core tenet.
- Responsive – Fit any form factor, desktop, mobile, tablet, or whatever is next.
- Connectivity independent – Enhanced with service workers to work offline or on low quality networks.
- App-like – Use the app-shell model to provide app-style navigation and interactions.
- Fresh – Always up-to-date thanks to the service worker update process.
- Safe – Served via HTTPS to prevent snooping and ensure content has not been tampered with.
- Discoverable – Are identifiable as “applications” thanks to W3C manifests and service worker registration scope allowing search engines to find them.
- Re-engageable – Make re-engagement easy through features like push notifications.
- Installable – Allow users to “keep” apps they find most useful on their home screen without the hassle of an app store.
- Linkable – Easily share via URL and not require complex installation.
