What is a Progressive Web App (PWA)?
And how you can use them to your advantage
Before I explain what is Progressive Web Apps and how you can use them to your advantage, let's have a look at the traditional ways of distributing mobile apps.
The mobile apps are distributed via app stores. There are however certain challenges in app management and distribution via these channels.
- The app store releases process includes a review each time you need to release the app. This process can take hours and sometimes days. The review process can raise objections that must be fixed and the app needs to go through the process again. This can delay the urgent releases
- App updates rely on user settings for upgrades. If the user does not have automatic updates for the apps, this will mean that the app will only be updated if the user does it manually. This can cause issues with critical bug fixes and features availability
- App stores have strict policies around financial transactions within the app. Both Apple and Google do not allow third-party payments via their platform. You must use an apple or android in-app purchase platform that can extract up to 30% of the transaction as a fee
Progressive Web Apps (PWA)
PWA’s provide an answer to these challenges in certain use cases especially if you are building an enterprise or business app that needs to be available via mobile.
PWA’s are created using web frameworks and delivered via URLs. Same as any web app or webpage. The difference is that once they are accessed via the mobile app, the user can pin the app to their phone home screen. Once that is done, the app work and behaves exactly like a native mobile app.
There are great advantages in building and distributing apps as PWA:
Cost
PWA is cost-effective. As you do not have to deal with Native Code for iOS and Android or plugins as in the case of Hybrid app development — you build the PWA once and run anywhere. You can even customize the app for desktop use. This increases your delivery channels and makes it easy for your users to do work in-field or in the office using a single codebase.
Distribution
Distribution is via URL so all you need to do is to send your users the URL or promote it via various other channels. Once the user pins the app to the home screen it will become a normal app.
App Update
Any app updates are distributed to the users automatically. This greatly reduces the release time and urgent and critical fixes can get to the users as soon as they are available.
Native Capability
Most of the native mobile functionality such as Camera, GPS are now available via a PWA. It works offline so you can create an app that is capable of working in the areas where connectivity is an issue.
Cloud Capability and Integration
As a web app, it can integrate with any cloud service for additional features such as payments. This allows providing a payment facility without having to pay the transaction fee to Apple and Android stores. The PWA can integrate with any enterprise-wide systems such as Single Sign-on, HR, Finance etc. This creates a seamless experience to carry out enterprise-level tasks with advanced capability.
Conclusion
In short, PWA can provide an enterprise app to enable users to do work anywhere, anytime saving time, money and streamlining business processes in a cost-effective way.
Interested in building a PWA — Talk to Lapis today for a free consultation.
- Lapis Case Study eCatch — An offline-capable PWA app to help Victorian Commercial Fishers complete their mandatory logbook submission to Victorian Fisheries Authority https://ecatch.vfa.vic.gov.au/portal/#/login
- General Case Studies — https://web.dev/clipchamp/
- PWA App List — https://www.pwalist.app/
