Why Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) Are the Future of Mobile E-Commerce

Progressive web applications are trending for transforming traditional shopping and business experiences. A few years ago, businesses were solely dependent on traditional mobile websites. The inception of progressive web applications (PWAs) has completely changed this convention. In the present, most consumers prefer mobile devices for shopping or exploring answers to their queries.   So, the relevance of mobile-optimized experiences has become a big change-maker. Progressive web applications are taking this experience to the pinnacle.

So, what are these progressive web applications – let’s share it with you in the next section.

Progressive Web Applications (PWA): An Introduction

Progressive web applications (PWAs) are web applications enriched with the best features of websites and mobile applications. This incredible combination contributes to speedy, reliable, and app-like experiences directly through a browser. 

These apps are like native apps that run in a browser, lifting the gap between mobile websites and native apps. They provide faster load times, which results in excellent user experience. Offline capabilities and cross-platform compatibility prove its worth. An online report also confirms it, revealing that its market growth is likely to be USD 13.3 billion by 2032, which was USD 1.4 billion in 2023.  These growth statistics are indeed surprising and enriched with clues to adapt to futuristic technology for e-commerce.

Why are PWAs Necessary for the Future of Mobile Commerce?

However, a few foremost reasons for its popularity are shared. Let’s focus on a few more ones that can support mobile commerce website design strategies.

1. Faster Performance and Reduced Friction

Every time you see users expect more than before.

Now, users are not ready to compromise with slow websites. They prefer to leave than to wait if the website takes longer than three seconds to load. With these apps, a seller can fulfill this customer’s intent. How?

These apps store key resources in cache, so near-instant loading can be possible no matter how uneven network conditions are. A few brands have claimed that these applications have increased their conversion rates by over 50%. 

Now, see it in the context of mobile commerce. Its e-commerce website designs are streamlined. Even, scripts are not lengthy, which shortens the time-to-interaction. Simply put, the loading becomes way faster than you think like an application. With this much faster web application, users barely bounce out. This experience ensures high conversion rates.

2. Native App-Like Experience Without Downloads

Traditional native apps have their own downsides. Users cannot access them until they visit app stores, down, install, and update. The evolution of PWAs has removed that hassle. Now, users can type a URL or even add its home-screen icon to enjoy the app-like experience immediately. A report revealed that e-commerce giant Flipkart saw its conversion rate leaping upto 70% once it launched a PWA. Also, it noticed an all-time high retention rate. 

From a mobile commerce website design perspective, this encourages designing apps for both browser and home-screen experience, with smooth animations, intuitive navigation, and streamlined check-out flow.

3. Offline and Low-Connectivity Functionality

The beauty of mobile commerce is that users start shopping on-the-go or anywhere from their comfort zone where network might be slow and unstable. In this case, PWAs emerge as the best hack, which uses cache data to provide seamless offline or semi-offline experience. So, users don’t worry. They simply continue to connect with e-stores even if the connection drops. Result? Online buyers experience lower data usage, which benefits sellers with overwhelming engagement in bandwidth-constraint markets.

So here, the gamechangers can be multiple things like caching strategies, fallback content, and graceful degradation.  These components help create a robust user experience even if the connectivity is not smooth.

4. Cross Platform Reach with Lower Development Cost

Do you think maintaining a native app is like a walkover? It’s absolutely not that easy. It requires maintenance for iOS and Android platforms and optimization like mobile websites. This maintenance cost can be huge or out-of-budget sometimes. If you consider mobile commerce website design, it needs responsive design, progressive enhancement, and one unified architecture, but not fragmented ones. To save that much amount, PWAs win.

5. Improved Conversion Rates and Engagement

An e-commerce website deploys data from multiple brands. It requires PWA implementation in this case to avoid technical distractions due to that variation. So, the progressive apps can convert your e-storefront into a cash cow through higher conversions, more page views per session, and reduced bounce rates.

A mobile website can also be optimized as a progressive application. Simply put, optimize check-out flow, integrate push notifications, and enabling home-screen reminders-these all promote engagement and sales.

6. Future-Ready Architecture for Mobile Commerce Website Design

Have you heard of headless web architecture? It refers to separating front-end from backend. E-commerce websites leverage this concept, which adds flexibility to them. They use APIs to enable agile updates, independent front-end changes, and smooth integration with mobile, web, and IoT devices. Its backend system manages content, circulating it between multiple heads or presentation layers via APIs (Application Programming Interfaces), which makes content flexible enough to publish via an app, website, or other devices.

That’s why web developers must plan from head-to-toe to the website structure, so its UI elements can be segmented. It enables logical handling of its content or UI elements via APIs, so its design can adapt to various devices and screen sizes.

Conclusion

We are living in the digital era where mobile shopping gives the next-level experience to both users and merchants. With slow mobile websites or optional native apps alone, delivering excellent experience is not possible. It’s proven that PWAs are faster than mobile apps and websites, which results in higher engagement rates and lower costs. Simply put, these progressive apps offer a robust mechanism that results in mobile commerce success. As e-commerce users prefer mobile devices for seamless engaging journeys, adopting PWAs becomes a necessity.

A website is considered excellent if it loads faster and is responsive. PWAs take this experience to the next level by exposing online selling businesses to growth and dominance.