Progressive Web Application Development with WordPress

Progressive Web Application Development with WordPress

"Progressive Web Apps are just websites that took all the right vitamins."

Before we understand why we need a progressive web app, let’s talk about some of the challenges we are facing today with native and web apps.

Internet speed: you may not realize this depending on where you live, but 60% of the world’s population is still using 2G internet. Even in the US, some people have to use dial-up to access internet.

Slow website load: Do you know how long a user waits to click the “Close X” button if a website is too slow? Three seconds! 53% of users abandon a website if it is too slow. friction: People don’t want to install native apps. An average user installs 0 applications in a month.

User engagement: Users spend most of their time in native apps, but mobile web reach is almost three times that of native apps. Hence, most of the users are not actively engaged. However, users are spending 80% of their time on only their top three native apps.

PWAs help solve these problems. There are multiple reasons for using a progressive web app, but here are some of the top capabilities it provides:

1. Fast: PWAs provide experiences that are consistently fast. From the moment a user downloads an app to the moment they start interacting with it, everything happens really fast. Because you can cache the data, it is extremely fast to start the app again even without hitting the network.

2. Integrated user experience: PWAs feel and behave like native apps. They sit in a user’s home screen, send push notifications like native apps, and have access to a device’s functionalities like native apps. The experience feels seamless and integrated.

3. Reliable experience: With the help of service workers, we can reliably paint a picture on a user’s screen even when network has failed.

4. Engaging: Because we can send notifications to a user, we can really drive the engagement up by keeping the user notified and engaged with the app.

The idea of building a Progressive Web App (PWA) is not new, but its definition has changed with the emergence of key technologies like service workers. Now it’s finally possible to build great experiences in a mobile browser. Being an early adopter can be scary, so we’d like to share some thoughts we found in the internet ans some personal notes.