Progressive web apps
In a time where platform-specific apps have been limited by their inability to function across multiple platforms, hindering them from reaching more users or even providing the same excellent user experience to the very people irrespective of the operating system the user decides to operate per time, and web apps despite being able to reach more users across the web has not been able to match the ingenuity in terms of specialized user experience offered by the platform-specific app.
Progressive web apps have emerged as a sustainable technology to serve the same awesome user experience across multiple platforms and operating systems while appearing also to be very platform specific.
How is this feat achieved?
To understand how this is made possible, let’s briefly look at the three pillars of app creation. The three app pillars
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Capability
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Reliability
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Installability
Capability
This generally has to do with the solution provided by your app, as well as the technologies utilized to improve the efficiency of your app at serving these solutions to the general public or average user. For instance, a Payment gateway that allows the use of crypto and fiat currencies will generally be trusted and preferred over traditional ones that allow only the use of fiat currency built off the relational database of traditional banks or institutions.
Reliability
Whereas the capabilities of software applications are really important, it is also worthy of note that the said applications are seen to be reliable by various users. Reliability talks about the user experience which is the feeling the average user has When interacting with the application. It also includes the quality of service delivery of the application among various factors of consideration.
Installability
No matter how good and reliable the service being rendered by a software application is, the said software will eventually be ignored if it is difficult to install or update. The installability of an app has to do with how available it is, and even how easily it can be installed by an average user.
Haven listed these factors, let’s look at the definition of progressive web apps.
What are progressive web apps?
Progressive web apps are application software built with Modern APIs, aimed at providing enhanced capabilities, reliability, and installability across multiple platforms and operating systems with a single codebase.
According to documentation on progressive web apps by web. dev,
“Progressive Web Apps are web applications that have been designed to be capable, reliable, and installable. These three pillars transform them into an experience that feels like a platform-specific application”.
“Progressive Web Apps are web applications that have been designed to be capable, reliable, and installable. These three pillars transform them into an experience that feels like a platform-specific application”.
“The numbers don't lie! Companies that have launched Progressive Web Apps have seen impressive results. For example, Twitter saw a 65% increase in pages per session, 75% more Tweets, and a 20% decrease in bounce rate, all while reducing the size of their app by over 97%. After switching to a PWA, Nikkei saw 2.3 times more organic traffic, 58% more subscriptions, and 49% more daily active users. Hulu replaced their platform-specific desktop experience with a Progressive Web App and saw a 27% increase in return visits”.
“Progressive Web Apps provide you with a unique opportunity to deliver a web experience your users will love. Using the latest web features to bring enhanced capabilities and reliability, Progressive Web Apps allow what you build to be installed by anyone, anywhere, on any device with a single codebase”.