PWAs Are the Secret Weapon to Supercharge Your Business Growth

The world has gone mobile for over a decade. However, small businesses struggle to reach and stay on mobile screens as they don’t have the budget that’s needed to develop and maintain a full-fledged app for Android, iOS, and iPadOS. Well, PWAs (Progressive Web Apps) combine the best parts of dedicated mobile apps and responsive websites to provide an amazing user experience to users while fueling your business growth.

Let’s find out how PWAs can benefit your business:

1. Unlock engagement with push notifications

Apart from prompting for abandoned carts, reminders, and other customer interactions at specific points, push notifications also allow businesses to increase engagement with customers.

Increased engagement is one of the key benefits of Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) and helps you bank on the most valuable currency of the digital age- attention. That’s not all! While native apps can only send push notifications to mobile devices, PWAs allow you to send them to both mobile and desktop users and target a wider audience.

2. User-friendly installation

A typical app installation process looks like this:

• The user learns about an app
• They look it up on the Play Store or App Store
• They download it with a biometric confirmation on fingerprint or FaceID.
• If the app is too big, they must wait for the download to finish before using it.

With PWAs, this is the installation process:

• Users visit a website
• They are prompted to install the PWA and click the install button
• That’s it!

Really, that’s it! There’s no complicated sign-up process either. If you are signed in on the browser, you are signed in on the PWA as well. This simplicity makes users more inclined to install a PWA on their phones. Moreover, what’s best about progressive web appsis that there’s no need for regular updates to keep them on the latest version.

3. Low development time and cost

Native app development comes with a lot of baggage. You need to:

• Create separate apps for iOS and Android.
• Sometimes, device-specific bugs must be squashed and that leads to delays for newer app versions.
• Supporting the app with regular updates costs a lot of money.

PWAs get rid of all the baggage in one fell swoop. They are built on the philosophy of ‘write once, run anywhere.’ That means when you develop a progressive web app for Android, you also have a PWA for iOS.

Yes, Apple is at the stage of malicious compliance with the EU and loves to flip-flop about progressive web apps for iOS. But even if PWAs for iOS get broken tomorrow, it isn’t going to change the fact that you developed an amazing progressive web app for every other platform in a short time and can maintain it at minimal cost.

4. You aren’t limited by app store regulations

In the mobile era, PWAs are essential resources for every business. Even if you build a native app, you are limited by both the Play Store and App Store’s restrictive regulations. Moreover, you need to pay both Google and Apple a significant chunk of your profits as platform fees.

That’s why both Netflix and Spotify prevent users from making transactions on their iOS app and redirect you to their website to renew or purchase a subscription. PWAs don’t rely on those stores and the tech giants don’t have a grip over your growth engine- your revenue.  These benefits are enticing enough for all businesses, irrespective of their size. However, for startups and small enterprises, PWAs are indispensable since they help to reach a wider audience, save costs, and grow their business.