What is PWA
PWA stands for Progressive Web Apps which are web apps that use services, manifests and other web platforms features in combination with progressive enhancement to give users an experience on par with native apps. PWAs provide a number of benefits to users⇒ including being installable, progressively enhanced, responsively designed, secure etc.
Making a Progressive Web Apps using React?
The production build has all the tools necessary to generate a first-class Progressive Web App, but the offline/cache-first behaviour is opt-in only. Starting with Create React App 4, you can add a src/service-worker.js file to your project to use the built-in support for Workbox's Inject Manifest plugin, which will compile your service worker and inject into it a list of URLs to precache.
Why Opt-in?
Offline-first Progressive Web Apps are faster and more reliable than traditional web pages, and provide an engaging mobile experience:
- All static site assets that are a part of your webpack build are cached so that your page loads fast on subsequent visits, regardless of network connectivity (such as 2G or 3G).
- Updates are downloaded in the background.
- Your app will work regardless of network state, even if offline. This means your users will be able to use your app at 10,000 feet and on the subway.
- On mobile devices, your app can be added directly to the user's home screen, app icon and all. This eliminates the need for the app store.
- However, they can make debugging deployments more challenging.
- The workbox-webpack-plugin is integrated into production configuration, and it will take care of compiling a service worker file that will automatically
- precache all of your webpack-generated assets and keep them up to date as you deploy updates. The service worker will use a cache-first strategy for handling all requests for webpack-generated assets, including navigation requests for your HTML, ensuring that your web app is consistently fast, even on a slow or unreliable network.
Note: Resources that are not generated by webpack, such as static files that are copied over from your local public/ directory or third-party resources, will not be precached. You can optionally set up Workbox routes to apply the runtime caching strategy of your choice to those resources.
Customization?
Starting with Create React App 4, you have full control over customizing the logic in this service worker, by creating your own src/service-worker.js file, or customizing the one added by the cra-template-pwa (or cra-template - pwa-typescript) template. You can use additional modules from the Workbox project, add in a push notification library, or remove some of the default caching logic. The one requirement is that you keep self .WB_MANIFEST somewhere in your file, as the Workbox compilation plugin checks for this value when generating a manifest of URLs to precache. If you would prefer not to use precaching, you can assign self .WB_MANIFEST to a variable that will be ignored
Progressive Web App Metadata?
The default configuration includes a web app manifest located at public/manifest .json, that you can customize with details specific to your web application. When a user adds a web app to their home screen using Chrome or Firefox on Android, the metadata in manifest .json determines what icons, names, and branding colours to use when the web app is displayed. The Web App Manifest guide provides more context about what each field means, and how your customizations will affect your users' experience.
Progressive web apps that have been added to the home screen will load faster and work offline when there's an active service worker. That being said, the metadata from the web app manifest will still be used regardless of whether or not you opt-in to service worker registration.
Now conclusion part -:
How do PWAs help in business?
1. Reduce Bounce Rates:
You may know one of the primary reasons for high bounce rates is when an app or website takes more time to load. Here, Progressive Web Apps can be a solution. It loads fast and provides a seamless experience to users, which helps you to reduce bounce rates.
2. Increase Speed and Time spent on Pages:
Compared to traditional websites, PWAs can load information faster. Fast loading offers users a quality experience and lets them interact with you quickly. It can reduce bounce rates, which in turn boosts your chances of getting conversions. So, fast loading times are essential for your business.
3. Can Help You Optimize for Search Engines:
Native apps are not discoverable online as they are hosted on the user’s devices. But, when it comes to PWAs, they are discoverable by search engines, because they are websites. Also, PWAs offer many other advantages, like they are: indexable, fast, linkable, and designed with user experience in mind.
4. Improve Client Retention There are nearly three million apps on Google’s Play store. Most of the apps downloaded show that less than the majority of users use any given app after the day they downloaded it. This app abandonment results in a considerable waste of time and resources for businesses.
Here, Progressive Web Apps can help you. It can retain users more as it:
- Help users to add your PWA to their home screen. There is no need for registration.
- Requires no download; users don’t have to worry about storage space on their devices.
- Has to push notifications to keep users informed of any updates in your business.
In this way, PWAs help you keep your customers engaged with your brand.
For understanding how Presear Softwares can help you more feel free to mail us your project idea or the problem statement at support@presear.com