Progressive web app (PWA) became a buzzword in early 2016, gaining significant traction across all business domains. Due to a simple and lightweight structure, progressive web apps grew in popularity and quickly became an effective alternative to native apps. As of today, these apps are supported by all major web browsers including Chrome, Safari, Firefox, and Microsoft Edge. However, over recent years, the mass interest has shifted back to native apps, considering a sharp decline in the demand for progressive web app development services.
Despite their receding popularity, progressive web apps offer promising solutions to a multitude of business problems. More importantly, being more responsive and lightweight as compared to native apps, PWAs deliver better user experiences across devices. Also, there are several brands that are still making the best use of progressive web apps to engage their audiences. It includes some prominent names such as Forbes, Twitter, Financial Times, and The Washington Post.
So is it worth investing in progressive web apps in 2021-22? In this post, we’ll be answering these questions while trying to debunk common myths associated with progressive web app development services.
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Progressive Web App Development: Pros and Cons
Let’s first talk about the main benefits that companies could reap through progressive web app development services:
- – Progressive web apps are more responsive than their native mobile app counterparts
- – They are simple, lightweight, and can be easily accessed across both mobile devices and desktops via a suitable web browser
- – PWAs easily adapt to a broad spectrum of devices and screen sizes and deliver consistent user experiences across different screens
- – They incorporate progressive improvement principles and work for all types of users regardless of their web browsers
- – These apps enable easy data updates that are instantly available to app users
- – As a standard protocol, PWAs are SSL-protected to facilitate a secure network connection
- – PWAs are more SEO-friendly as compared to their native counterparts
- – These apps are similar to websites and are easily indexed by search engines
- – PWAs acquire only a small percentage of the memory space across the supported devices and web browsers
Now let’s take a look at some major drawbacks of progressive web applications (PWAs):
- – There are several limitations with offline usage that negatively impacts the overall app performance and user experience.
- – PWAs are only supported by Apple mobile devices (iPhones/iPads) running on iOS 11.3 and above. Users may face compatibility issues with devices running on the older iOS versions.
- – Apple devices keep PWAs deprived of many crucial features such as Touch ID, facial recognition, Bluetooth, ARKit, Beacons, and altimeter sensors.
- – Most users face compatibility issues while using PWAs across a number of legacy devices.
- – These apps are written in languages like HTML and JavaScript and thus, they are not as battery efficient as native apps written in Swift and Kotlin.
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Future Aspects and Predictions
In today’s pandemic-induced business environment, developing web and mobile apps has become imperative to remain functional for most enterprises. Despite the limitations, progressive web application development is the fastest way to get off the ground and leverage digital technology to improve customer services. While on average, a native app takes five to nine months of development, PWAs would only take a couple of months.
In addition to speed and efficacy, PWAs definitely strike the chord when it comes to development costs as they are more affordable and cost-effective. More importantly, a single app works for all platforms since it is easily accessible across all platforms via web browsers. On the contrary, native apps require a development from scratch for their respective platforms. For instance, you obviously need to develop different versions of the same app for Android and iOS platforms.
It’s quite evident that progressive web app development services help you build an app in less than half the time as compared to native apps. Besides, they are equally effective at engaging users across a wide range of devices and platforms, not to mention the reduced cost and timeline.
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The Final Words
All things considered, it seems quite plausible that the popularity of PWAs may shoot up in the coming years. During the ongoing COVID-19 situation, businesses are looking for faster and affordable ways to gain traction online. That being said, PWAs are the perfect fit for small-scale retailers and store owners who wish to strengthen their online presence through eCommerce.
We, at Oodles ERP, provide complete software solutions to address diverse business challenges with advanced problem-solving capabilities. Our development team specializes in building high-quality native, hybrid, and cross-platform solutions for web and mobile platforms. We also have our expertise in progressive web application development for cross-industry business use cases. Our team uses agile methodologies to develop scalable, responsive, and lightweight PWAs to deliver engaging user experiences across devices. To learn more about our progressive web app development services, drop us a line at [email protected].
