WHAT ARE PWAs?

WHAT ARE PWAs?

Im sure you have certainly heard about PWA (Progressive Web Apps), but you may not know what they are. Let me try to shed some light on this technology from our experiences at Making Science. In a web world in which the majority of browsing traffic is consumed on mobile phones, having our website adapted to any device and most importantly a mobile device is a competitive advantage in the market. A Progressive Web App is nothing more than a website that through technology can behave like a native app on mobile devices. Since this allows you to have access to all the functionalities of the different mobile devices (camera, microphone, geolocation, phone orientation, etc.) just like a native app would. With the PWA it is possible to unify the best of the app world and the best of a web page world. How does it work? The PWA consist of three key elements that are: Manifest, Service Workers and Responsive.

• Manifest: this code will allow the installation of the PWA on the desktop of a device.
• Service Workers: is a script that runs in the background that will allow the app to be cached when it is loaded the first time. Thus, in the next visits, we can access the content without connection. It also supports push notifications.
• Responsive: The responsive development of the site allows this to be displayed correctly on any device. Additionally, the APIs for Geolocation and Media allows access PWB to access the location, microphone and camera of the device.

So what advantages does a PWA have over a native App?

• The main advantage is that it is not necessary to develop a new platform to efficiently reach your mobile market, with just an incremental introduction of PWA technology you will have a very effective to reach to your mobile audience.
• The installation process is very simple and does not require an app market for users to access the PWA.
• Finding the PWS is very simple since it is done from the search engine of our browser.
• Allows the sending of push notifications.
• Updates are made automatically.
• It can be accessed without a data connection, “offline mode”.
• The loading is done almost instantaneously.
• It does not suppose consume additional memory beyond normal browser usage.
• Its development is cheaper than that of a Native App.
• Allows sharing the web content by sending url, something that an app does not allow.

Thanks to all the advantages we have described, developing your website as a PWA will lead to an increase in the loyalty and conversion rate of users on your website. All via an optimized user experience!