When PWA and when Mobile Application in <span class="spanBlock">e-commerce?</span>
Why is it worth having a mobile application in eCommerce?
Mobile apps allow us to be in constant contact with our customers, a feature not offered by all sales channels. First of all, apps allow users to search for basic information about our company, such as opening hours or the location of showrooms/ store locations. Apps give us the ability to reserve seats for events or merchandise in the store, allow us to create an account, check our order history, or participate in a loyalty program.
Push notifications can be personalized for a specific group of recipients, for example: to a group of women in the 30-40 age range, and completely different to men in the same age group. Utilizing geolocation, customers can be notified of nearby stores and incentivized to visit with offers.The options for interacting with the customer are many, but the most important thing is that we can be in constant communication with the client because he can have our app on his phone, computer or TV.
The most important first impression!
Did you know that according to (source: https://www.appsflyer.com/blog/trends-insights/app-uninstall-trends/ ) nearly 30% of users uninstall new apps on their phone within a maximum of 30 days of downloading them? That's why the first impression is so important. We need to ensure that our app provides value from the start. Here are some of the most important points that an app must meet:
- Ease of use, or User Experience (UX) design, is a crucial aspect of our app. It defines how the various elements are arranged in it, their intuitiveness and ease of use. For more information on User Experience, check out my teammate's article link>https://monogo.pl/en/blog/you-cant-win-with-price-the-value-of-user-experience-in-e-business.
- Stable solutions: Our application must run smoothly, not throw errors, shut down spontaneously or hang. This can irritate the customer to the point that anger can be vented by a lack of purchases in one or another sales channel. In short, it can have negative consequences for us. Therefore, when investing in an application, make sure that the company that will implement it has a QA department and manual and automated tests are guaranteed in the contract.
- Speed of operation - the application must work fast. A very important rule I recommend is the 3-second rule. This means that each view of our application, such as login page, registration page, product catalogue, product card, shopping cart, etc., should not take more than 3 seconds to load. If we do not follow this rule, some customers may abandon their purchases.
Mobile application types: PWA and native application
There are two types of apps. The first one is PWA - Progressive Web App, or progressive app. This type of app is highly adaptable to all mobile devices, TVs, desktops, and all thanks to the fact that it works through a web browser. We can add such an app by going to the URL of our web app and we can then upload it to our device. Once the app is added to the device, we have a shortcut, and the user experience is as if it were a regular mobile app, of course, if we followed good practices during the UX work.
Suggestions: "We can add such an app by going to the URL of our web app and we can then upload it to our device." could be rephrased as "We can add a PWA by visiting the URL of our web app and downloading it to our device."
PWA - advantages
- Progressive applications do not take up memory on user devices. Only the cache memory of our web browser is used, and the icon on the home screen is a shortcut to the application.
- Users don't have to log in to Google Play or the App Store to install apps (although if you want them to, Google Play allows you to add PWA-type apps to its store). The app store URL is sufficient for installation.
- We don't have to upload apps to the Apple or Google stores. So no verification of them is required. The user launching the application always has it in the latest version, and it is uploaded immediately.
- Saving money, the PWA application works on Android, IOS and the Web by which we write one code, instead of three: Web application, Android application and IOS application. To sum up - the cost overall will be significantly less.
PWA - disadvantages
- Not all browsers support PWA. On Android and desktop, we have support mainly in Google Chrome, and on IOS- Safari.
- PWAs drain the battery more heavily than native applications because web browsers are "power-hungry"
- Lack of trust of some customers. If there are no apps in the Google or Apple store they are in his opinion unsafe, which of course is not true.
- Large differences in support. Between Android and IOS - Apple only started officially supporting PWA on its devices last year and is expanding its support month by month. By contrast, Google Chrome on Android supports PWA virtually 100%.
- Push notifications are not supported on IOS mobile devices for now. The word "for now" is key, as the maker of the Safari browser has confirmed that it is working on supporting this functionality.
- Limitations that PWA brings with it are the lack of support by some browsers for functionalities such as camera access to scan QR codes, and location access, among others. For a complete list of browser and device support, follow this https://www.goodbarber.com/blog/progressive-web-apps-browser-support-compatibility-a883/
Native applications
The second type of applications are native applications. These types of applications are written for each platform separately. In this case, we work separately on the application for the Android platform and separately for the IOS platform. Therefore, it is easy to calculate that the cost of this solution is much higher compared to a Progressive Web App (PWA). However, these applications use 100% of the capabilities of the operating system, because they are specifically written for it.
Native applications- advantages
- Speed, as they are written for a dedicated system,
- Lack of restrictions as native apps have access to all modules of the device such as Camera, Location, NFC, gyroscope, and contacts,
- Very high security of the apps due to the verification process in Google Play and the App Store.
Native apps- disadvantages
- A lengthy process of deploying new versions of apps as each app update must pass security verification, resulting in a slow upload of changes,
- Cost, cost, cost- there must be a separately written app for Android, IOS and Web,
- They consume phone memory and RAM, so someone with a fully occupied phone memory will not be able to install them.
I took the two most popular technologies for comparison: PWA and Native apps. PWA has its limitations related to support by web browsers, such as Push Notifications, while native apps have no such limitations. However, these limitations are just a matter of time as web browser manufacturers are showing more and more support for PWA in their roadmaps, such as the Webkit Features Status (Safari and Chrome browser engine). A PWA application will work best as a replacement for a native application for the web store.
Native apps provide us with the most options and are the most efficient. Furthermore, if your app needs to access contacts and biometric data or make use of augmented reality, then a native app will be the best choice.