My early career can almost be defined by how efficiently my teams could ship iOS and Android mobile apps to the stores just because of the last decade’s craze of native app demand. But after a decade, users are downloading fewer and fewer apps, and clients are frequently suspicious of the strategy of paying for the same product twice.
Modern developers and business owners now have a much better option for giving the native experiences and rapidly emphasized feature sets that users expect: Progressive Web Applications (PWAs).
PWAs are pushing the industry forward in terms of how mobile experiences are built, shipped, and used. Here are some top reasons why Progressive Web Apps are the smart choice:
- Single Design
With native apps, a designer has to provide two sets of design standards — the official HIG built by Apple, and Google’s Material Design guidelines. If this appears like extra work for the design team, the added potential for human error, delayed approval on deliverables, and additional expense on your invoices, you’re not wrong.
Instead, PWAs use a single, responsive interface with a consistent app-like experience that is available to more people on more devices, with broadly varying screen sizes, browsers, and operating systems. One and done — and yes, you can still have your home screen icon, push notifications, and device hardware access.
- Single Code Base
The software isn’t perfect always. It’s developed by humans, and it has changing dependencies outside developers’ control. When designing both iOS and Android apps, every single feature is built twice, and every single defect or update has to be resolved in both codebases. This means that the project teams have to repeat the issue on both, and log and track the issue for both. Make the fix on both. Then re-test on both.
With Progressive Web Applications, there is one team, one tech stack, one test strategy, one backlog, and one codebase.
- App Stores requirement
Any release strategy for native apps means planning for both App Store and Google Play, and that means tracking a lot of dependencies months in advance. Then, despite your best-laid plans, while your developers are crushing last-minute bugs, you’re emailing marketing at 2 a.m. to tell them that the app was rejected because of its title, or because the header is off.
In contrast, shipping a PWA is so simple that it’s completely old-fashioned — you just publish it. And that means the most recent update is instantly available to every user. If you Missed something, Update it again five minutes later.
- Complex Distribution Strategy
Teams used to send out multi-page documents to our clients detailing the hoops of beta app distribution on the thin hopes that this might help internal test users in probably accessing early builds via TestFlight. And still, users would necessarily log dozens of bugs against an outdated version of the app, or better yet, never get the TestFlight invite at all.
Stores are for customers. If the app isn’t consumer-facing, Apple’s in-house and established distribution options explain your best options for sharing your app without the App Store. But best of luck setting up the right native distribution solution for your current operations while also providing business needs. More often than not, the shoe just doesn’t fit.
In contrast, here’s an elevator pitch on distributing PWAs — type in a URL, then download an icon. Or better yet, just Google the app name; the SEO benefit of Progressive Web Apps is amazing.
It is that easy, which is just one reason why Progressive Web Applications are here to stay. While supporting the same UX and feature set of installed native apps, PWAs offer unique product development success, distribution uniformity, and opportunity for business growth.
