Progressive Web Apps (PWAs): Top Examples

Progressive Web Apps, or PWAs, are slowly becoming the preferred choice of many digital businesses. You wonder why? It’s because of PWAs reap the benefits of both worlds—a native app and a website—with added high performance, which results in helping your digital business grow and earn huge profits.

Building a PWA for your business is the most economical development solution for your business (if you are running on a tight budget), but that’s not it. Some of the biggest brands, like Amazon, Spotify, and Twitter, also have PWA versions (along with the mobile app version). .

What Makes PWAs so Special: Benefits and Features

Well, there is numerous reason that is making a PWA a preferred choice of many digital platforms, some of which are:

• For PWA, the developers don’t need to develop any separate code base; rather, a single code base can be used to render both—a website and a mobile app.
• A PWA derives data from Service Workers (where most of the PWA’s cache is stored), due to which they run smoothly on weak networks.
• PWAs are much quicker to install and update since they are smaller in size.
• Digital product owners who decide to develop a PWA don’t have to incur extra costs on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store.

As stated, a PWA gives users features of a native app and a website on a single platform; some of these features are:

• Push notifications
• Background updates
• Bluetooth connectivity
• User contact access
• Speech recognition
• Offline and low connectivity modes
• Geolocation access
• AR/VR object projection
• Capture media using the camera

Now let’s discuss some popular PWA examples that revolutionize how digital products are perceived.

Best PWA Examples

Jumia

Jumia is a leading eCommerce store with a pan-Africa network of online commerce. This platform features over 6,000,000 products and sells products from over 50,000 international brands.

Challenges

• 74% of connections in sub-Saharan Africa are on 2G networks, and most of them work on data limitations as well. The population belonging to this geographical app also doesn’t have access to high-end devices.
• Both these factors together made it difficult for the Jumia product owners to convince their prospective customers to download and use heavy data native apps.

Solutions

• Jumia switched to the PWA version of its digital ecommerce platform, which consumed 80% fewer data and 25 times less storage. As a result, there was up to a 33% increase in conversion rate.
• The PWA also works smoothly in offline mode, which helps them reach a larger section of people.

Starbucks

Starbucks launched its PWA in 2015 when it rolled out an online ordering feature on its website. The driving force behind building a PWA was to make their ordering facility accessible on all market spheres, aka developing and underdeveloped countries where fast network connectivity was/is still an issue.

Since a PWA follows the App Shell model, which allows PWAs to function smoothly even in offline mode, this move was a wise decision to make. People could now decide and customize their order even offline and then add and order items whenever they get access to the internet.

Challenges

• Since a Starbucks native app was already in place, they wanted to develop a PWA that offers a uniform native app experience to its users.
• The UI/UX of the PWA Starbucks app needed to be extremely user-friendly and hassle-free in terms of customizing the order.
• This also entails the development of robust business logic, which is quick to store customer customization in service workers so that it can be accessed even in the offline mode.

Solutions

• The developing team built the PWA using React and added animations just like it did in the native app.
• To ensure that the users of the app are able to customize their orders, they developed unique business logic which would allow each menu item to have a customization option.
• In-memory caching logic was developed to handle complex caching information.

Twitter

Twitter is one of the most popular social media networking platforms that is used across the globe. It has over 328 million monthly active users, of which over 80% access the platform on their mobile phones.

Twitter decided to build a PWA app to enhance its overall user experience. As a result, they launched Twitter Lite PWA in April 2017, which resulted in an exponential increase in their user base.

Challenges

• Twitter was finding it difficult to engage its users on the mobile web, they were seeking solutions to engage tier users on the mobile web.
• Since their app catered to a very large section and a variety of people belonging to different demographic settings, their platform needed a solution that enabled them to have faster downloads, consume less data, and be compatible with less powerful devices.

Solutions

• Adding the ‘add to home screen’ feature of PWA helped Twitter reengage its user base on mobile. That is because it is easier to access (from the home screen) and quicker to download, and the user does not have to go through the hassle of downloading from third-party App Stores.
• Twitter Lite was developed to consume less data, its business logic automatically optimizes images to reduce data consumption by up to 70%.
• All the preload resources are broken down so that they can load the initial screen faster, even with less data availability, and the rest of the information and resources are cached into service worker scripts.

Like Starbucks, Twiiter too has used React.js. Wondering why React.js is so widely used for web development? Read this blog.

MishiPay

MishiPay is a retail payment solution for brick-and-mortar stores. It enables shoppers to scan and pay using their own mobile phones for their shopping sprees without needing to stand in long queues waiting for their turn to checkout. According to the platform’s claim, MishiPay PWA saves up to 2.5 years that could be spent standing in checkout queues.

MishiPay uses GPS sensor technology that enables users to locate MishiPay-enabled retail stores, cameras to scan the item barcodes, and an online payment gateway to pay using their preferred payment method.

Initially, the platform launched the Android and iOS mobile app versions of their digital product but soon shifted to PWA.

Challenges

• MishiPay was built to render quick payment service, and the hassle of downloading the app did not align with their business idea.
• This hassle was also impacting their adoption rates.

Solutions

• They switched to the PWA version to avoid the hassle of downloading the app. It allowed users to try the digital product inside the store to make the payment for their purchase—thus ensuring a seamless work experience.
• To make the PWA version more accessible, MishiPay installed geolocated QR codes on their in-store displays. This way, they don’t have to search for the PWA on the browser whenever they wish to access the service.

Housing.com

Housing.com is India’s one of the top leading online real estate platforms. It offers homes, resale homes, rentals, plots, and co-living spaces listings in India. Their digital product provides virtual viewing with the help of AR/VR technologies.

They launched their PWA version, which has helped them achieve over 38% increase in their conversion rates.

Challenges

• They needed a robust mechanism to handle the listing load time because a lower loading mechanism directly impacts the conversion rates.
• Their digital services should be able to function properly even in low-network areas, which their native app couldn’t achieve. Moreover, it consumed a lot of data as well.

Solutions

• To curb the network connectivity issues and render native app-like functionality, Housing.com switched to PWA. Using technologies such as Service Workers, IndexedDB, Add to Home Screen, and Push Notifications led to an exponential rise in their conversion rates. Not only this, their bounce rates too fell by 40%.

Sports Mole

Sports Mole is a sports news platform. The platform is continuously updated with the latest sports-oriented news and results of sporting events. It primarily covers sports such as football, F1, tennis, rugby, cricket, golf, and even snooker.

Challenges

• Since the platform is updating every minute, the platform needed a better mechanism that is fast, updates quickly, and would not hinder the user experience of the sports enthusiasts.

Solutions

• The development of the PWA version solved the problem of updating and loading new information. Since PWAs are easier to update, the platform can easily add sports stories.
• Also, as discussed use of service workers enables the readers to access the content even on low (absolutely no) network connectivity.

Uber

Uber is one of the most successful start-ups of the 21st century. Founded in 2009, it revolutionized the traditional ways the cab service was perceived and practiced.

The platform experienced exponential growth and has a user base across the globe. This means that the platform needs to user’s experience with the digital platform is the most crucial aspect in determining the success of Uber’s digital platform.

Challenges

• They needed a mechanism that remains compatible with the increasing user database of Uber digital services.
• They needed to build a platform whose services are handy and easy to access in cases of emergency; for this, their platform needs to function smoothly and is fast across browsers (even in low network connectivity).

Solutions

• For PWA, Uber had to make considerable design changes so that it works so that the design elements don’t require too much space and loading time. One way of doing this is that the Uber PWA rendered their icons in SG image format, which occupies less space and requires short paths.
• ThePWA, m.uber (pronounced as moo-ber), is just 50 b in size, which enables it to run at a good speed even on a 2G network range.

Pure Formulas

Pure Formulas is a USA-based online health and supplement provider. With a range of over 40,000 supplements, organic food, beauty, sports nutrition, and pet products—this platform provides free shipping facilities.

Challenges

• Pure Formula’s website on mobile used to function extremely slowly, and even the checkout process too was slow. This resulted in decreasing conversion rates and an increase in order abandonment rates. Therefore, they needed solutions that would help them curb this problem and render a smooth experience to mobile users.

Solutions

• As a result, they had to build a Progressive Web App to render speed to the mobile site users.
• They also integrated fast and secure payment gateway API —which is easily integrated with a PWA framework. This helped them reduce cart abandonment rates.

Wego

Wego is a travel services provider that helps its client to plan and book flights, hotels, and trips seamlessly. It provides its services in 25 countries, and in 2017 it was Google’s pilot partner in developing PWA technology for their business.

Challenges

• Wego wanted their customers to have easy and quick access to their digital product, which would enable them to cater to their clients much more seamlessly.

Solutions

• The Wego developers built the PWA version, which was much faster and considerably reduced loading time due to its app shell model. The use of the service worker mechanism reduced the loading time for returning users to under 1 second.

We hope that this blog sheds light on how different business verticals use PWA to reach their customers and earn massive business profits with an economical, flexible and quick solution.

Even though building a PWA is a much cheaper option than building a native app, the choice (whether you should build a PWA or a native app) also depends on your business goals and your customer’s needs and wants.

If you are in this dilemma, you can consult our PWA development experts to know the best suitable option for you.