What is a PWA?

Progressive web apps, or PWAs, have become more popular lately after Microsoft announced that Windows would support them natively. They’re also available in Chrome, Firefox and Safari.

A PWA lets you install the app straight from the browser window itself. Once installed on your phone like a native app, it keeps working even without a connection.

Imagine your business web app being fully installable on mobile or desktop devices, without needing to build a separate app for each platform (Android, iOS, Windows, Linux…): the cost of developing and maintaining your digital infrastructure drops considerably.

Let’s dig into what progressive web apps are, why they’re better than native mobile apps, and what sets them apart from traditional web or mobile applications.

What is a progressive web app (PWA)?

The term Progressive Web App was coined by Alex Russell.

Progressive web apps are simply websites that took all the right vitamins. It’s not a new framework or a new technology: it’s a set of best practices for making a web app behave similarly to a desktop or mobile app. The goal is for the experience to be so consistent that the user doesn’t notice the difference between a PWA and a native mobile app.

PWAs deliver their experience through progressive enhancement: basically, a PWA performs the same functions on a brand-new iPhone as on one from an earlier generation. Some feature might not be available, but the app keeps working as it should.

Why do we need a progressive web app?

Before understanding why we need a PWA, let’s look at some of the challenges native and web apps face today.

Internet speed: depending on where you live, you might not notice it, but 60% of the world’s population still uses 2G internet. Even in the United States, some people still use dial-up access.

Slow site loading: do you know how long a user waits before hitting the close button if a site is too slow? Three seconds. 53% of users abandon a website if it’s too slow.

High friction: people don’t want to install native apps — the average user installs 0 apps per month.

User engagement: users spend most of their time in native apps, but mobile web reach is nearly three times greater than that of native apps. Even so, they spend 80% of their time on just their three favorite native apps.

PWAs help solve these problems. There are several reasons to use a progressive web app, but here are some of their main capabilities:

• Fast: PWAs always offer fast experiences. From the moment a user opens the app to when they start interacting with it, everything happens very quickly. Since it can cache data, it's extremely fast to start up again even without a network connection.
• Integrated user experience: PWAs feel and behave like native apps. They sit on the home screen, send push notifications, and have access to device features, just like a native app. The experience feels integrated.
• Reliable experience: with the help of service workers, the user's screen can keep rendering reliably even when the network has failed.
• Engaging: by being able to send notifications to the user, engagement can increase by keeping them informed and involved with the app.