Progressive Web Applications for Magento

What is a Progressive Web Application / PWA for Magento?

Progressive Web Applications or PWA’s provide a powerful, app-like browsing experience using good old web technology. From a user's point of view, PWA’s can behave like a web page and a native mobile app at the same time. To users, PWA’s feel like a real mobile application regardless of the network state; they even work in offline mode.

Key Benefits of Progressive Web Applications

• Progressive Web Applications have an offline mode availability
• Mobile like behavior so users can access website/s anywhere
• Installation runs smoothly
• It does not require the app store submission, the updates get automatically updated when a user relaunches the application
• PWA's use hardware features implementing various mobile features, such as the push notifications and the best thing is that the developers have full control over their implementation/s which caters to a wide range of new business marketing as well as sales channel/s.

Characteristics of Progressive Web Applications

Here are some of the main features of PWA’s, they are:

• Discoverable - Because a progressive web app is a website, you must be able to access it on search engines. This is a great advantage over native applications, which do not automatically become searchable via Google.

• Linkable - A well-designed website should use the *Uniform Resource Interface(URI)

it indicates the state of the app. This should retain or reload state even if a user bookmarks or shares the application’s URL. - (URI)

• Responsive - The progressive web applications ‘Universal Interface’(UI), are responsive to the view perspective of the device they run on and adjust for screen size.

• Installable - The progressive web applications are quick and easy to install

• App like - A progressive web app should also be like native app and should be built on an application shell model without refreshing much.
• Safe - It is imperative that PWA’s be delivered via HTTPS to prevent ‘middle-man attacks’.

What can a Progressive Web App do for Magento 2 store?

Magento 2 store owners with strong financial capabilities, should really consider developing PWA's, as this will help reach a large number of users and more potential buyers. Converting your site to PWA using Magento 2 PWA Theme will also create a new user experience.

The thing that makes these progressive web applications so useful and powerful is that these mobile apps also become very popular by one person telling another how they bought something online using the mobile application to purchase something from their favorite online store without having to first boot up their PC, login, and open their Internet Brower to shop online.

Progressive Web Applications enable Retailers to reach out to more Consumers much easier and quicker in this crazy competitive market of our daily world. The businesses that choose to prioritize future-generation mobile experiences and easy access to goods, as well as services, will be the leaders of tomorrow's eCommerce.

So by using today's technology and a bit of savvy we can simply turn native website/s, into progressive web apps that will work on mobile phones and tablets, and many other devices.

How do I integrate Progressive Web App in Magento 2?

There are three methods to convert Magento 2 websites into PWA's

• Magento 2 PWA Extensions:
  Buy modules online and pay for the installation or the service or you can just install and configure the extension yourself.

• Magento 2 PWA Studio:
  Hire PWA developer/s that have experience in both Magento 2 and PWA.
  It will take a few months to develop your PWA storefront and new API using Magento 2 PWA Studio tools. This will need a generous budget too.

• Magento 2 PWA Theme:
  Convert Your Site To PWA Using Magento 2 PWA Theme, with the PWA storefront and core API already built, the costs will depend on your level of customization.

Magento 2 PWA Theme - Turns the Magento 2 website into an app-like mobile application.

Using Magento 2 to create any type of hybrid web application, the progressive web app is currently one of the hottest trends. There are many extensions available on the online market to help you create PWA's although it is a better solution to develop your PWA from scratch using Magento PWA Studio. Magento 2 PWA Studio is basically just another set of tools to support you through your PWA development. It will replace the existing Magento storefront with a PWA storefront that is connected to the backend via API.

What does PWA Studio do?

Over time Magento developed a set of tools that were targeted at providing developers with a standard interface to create PWA apps for Magento online stores. Over time this initiative produced the technology platform called PWA Studio.

History of PWAs

The Origin of Progressive Web Apps

The developers working on the Google Chrome browser in 2015 coined the term PWA.

An evolution to front-end web technologies enabled merchants to deliver ‘app-like’ contextual experiences and change mobile shopping experiences.