The Role of Progressive Web Apps in E-commerce and Customer Purchase

This report delves into the role and impact of Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) within the e-commerce landscape, specifically focusing on how they influence customer purchase decisions. The paper begins by defining PWAs and highlighting their evolution, emphasizing their ability to offer an app-like experience through web browsers. It then explores the functionalities of PWAs, including instant load times, the ability to add apps to the home screen, and offline mode capabilities. These features enhance the user experience and drive engagement. The report further examines the impact of PWAs on customer purchase behavior, particularly for small and medium-sized enterprises, explaining how PWAs facilitate mobile commerce and improve conversion rates. Finally, the report concludes by emphasizing the importance of PWAs for retailers in today's digital environment.

Running head: The role of progressive Web Apps in the E-commerce Spectrum and
its influence over consumer purchase.
1
Institution Affiliation
The role of progressive Web Apps in the E-commerce Spectrum and its influence over consumer
purchase.
Student Name
Tuesday, March 5, 2019

The role of progressive Web Apps in the E-commerce Spectrum and its influence
over consumer purchase.
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Introduction
Progressive web Apps cannot be considered as a new innovation globally. The above term
PWA was coined by the developers of Google who are Frances Berriman and Alex Russell three
years ago. Notably, from the foundation of PWA, uptake and awareness have emerged to grow
slowly. Off recent Google has made some other announcement about the integration of features
into all upcoming version of Android. If one was to argue with the fact that half of the smartphone
users in the USA will not download any apps for a month or even longer, this news will be not be
taken lightly by many retailers as it will be difficult for them to market their apps. There exists
more than two million applications on the Google Play store and App store which stands out from
the crowd and thus making them become virtually impossible. Users may be reluctant to engage
with all the new applications meaning that the retailers will have some hard time generating via
the mobile.
This paper will look at some of the roles of progressive web apps in the electronic
commerce spectrum and how it has influenced the customer purchase (Ater, 2017.). The good
news is that shifting away from all the native applications to Progressive Web Apps has been
largely positive for the existing retailers.
Progressive Web Apps
There has always existed some confusion with regards to the phrase “Progressive Web
App” and thus it will be worth to know its definition. In defining PWA in a simple way, PWA is
considered to be a platform that can be accessed over and through any recognized and compatible
browser and which offers some app-like experience to its users (simicart.com, 2019). It is a

The role of progressive Web Apps in the E-commerce Spectrum and its influence
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general term applied in the context of Mobile which is applied in such a setting. Nevertheless,
Progressive Web Apps should be responsible for all range of devices from all mobiles to the
desktops. Progressive Web Apps have been characterized by one using the current browser tech
such as the manifest files, the integration of browser-hardware and the service workers, in
particular, the cache API. They are supposed to offer the native app's functionalities.
In mobile e-commerce, previously there existed a performance gap between the existing
native apps and the web. A help retailer of web-app reach a much broader audience on mobile,
but in most cases, it is slow when loading making it be less compatible and thus having smaller
screen devices (Yoon, 2012). The struggle to work across all the varieties of network conditions
and the associated devices, such websites could only manage to convert about 2.3% of all the
visitors on mobile browsers (Malavolta, 2016,). In the meantime, the providers of apps having
some superior experience resulted in about 6% conversion rate, which is nearly three times those
of the mobile web.

The role of progressive Web Apps in the E-commerce Spectrum and its influence
over consumer purchase.
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Nonetheless, consumers are able to only download and use mobile applications from
all the brands which have been shortlisted and which are most used or interacted with. In
consideration to the memory of the user’s devices, native apps have been seen as a low adoption
despite them having high performance in their mobiles (Mollen, 2010). There is a fully
functioning native app that may require a higher development budget, as this will take extra time
and efforts in building and maintaining.
Notably, to address such problems, websites across all the known industries have started
to utilize progressive web apps in improving their performance (Love, 2019). With the use of
progressive web apps, retailers now are able to offer the same high and known-performing
experience like it is in the case of the native apps for all growing mobile audience on the web
browsers. The new-made standards have enabled such brands to be able to combine the
convenience and the native app usability with the idea of reaching the website in engagement
and retain of customers (Hume, 2017). When the gap between the app and web is bridged,
progressive web apps has promised to drive strong revenue growth while at the same time
eliminating the need to investing all the native applications for the retailers.
Functionality and roles of PWA in E-commerce.
Evolution description that has been taking place in the browsers, the new class of
applications have embraced the concept of progressive enhancement. This has been used in
delivering a better experience than conventional web applications. The top-level applications in
most cases add new capabilities that may be used in setting them apart. Some of the major
functionalities of PWA are such as Full Screen, Working offline, being on the home screen and
the push notifications.

The role of progressive Web Apps in the E-commerce Spectrum and its influence
over consumer purchase.
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1. Instant load time.
Progressive Web apps are in most cases built with some progressive enhancement which
are considered as the core principle, this helps in enabling the app in loading instantly especially
in cases of repeated visits. When one takes advantage of the level cache of the device, this has
minimized the amount of data needed and thus the systems quickly responding to all the user
interactions. The modern web tech has allowed such an app to be able to save data locally in the
caches of the device, so in this case, it can be delivered directly from the users of such a device.
On the repeated visits, progressive web apps have provided the same instant loading like that of
the native apps as it displays the content of the cache immediately, then it is delivered
progressively with the rest of the page. The app may either be able to respond with some smooth
transition to all the next screen or the show that loads the indicator while at the same time
waiting for a response from such network.
2. Add to Home Screen.
This functionality has been utilized in that it makes it easy for all the users to install
progressive web apps on their known devices. Once the user has accepted the prompt, the web
app has been having a native-like presence on the home screen. This has offered provision with
the same visibility and accessibility as the native applications to keep it on the mind of the top
users. With an addition to the first-class icon on the home screen device, it has been launched
with having some immersive full-screen inexperience and controlling over the orientation of the
screen (tijsterman, 2018). Progressive Web Apps technology will always allow one to decide
whether one web app will be appearing to the user, the moment one define the splash screen, the
icons of the home screen and the color of the theme used for address bar in the modern used web
browsers.

The role of progressive Web Apps in the E-commerce Spectrum and its influence
over consumer purchase.
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3. Offline mode
Notably, just like most of the native app, Progressive web app responds in many different
ways when a device is not connected on the internet. In many cases, the users are able to
continue with browsing, instead of them being told that they cannot move further on the page as
the other well-known web does (Cieloha, 2017). They are built around the offline-first concept,
Progressive web apps have been powered with a cache system which is robust in handling the
requests which are done offline and sending them once there is an available connection (Lo,
2012). This has helped them to offer the offline functionalities in achieving the high-level-
performance regardless of the condition of the network.
PWA influences on customer Purchase
First SME solution for mobile commerce
PWA has been designed in helping the retailers and the developers in creating the
dependable, fast and the appeal the mobile experiences for all the customers that will increase the
conversion rate and thus being able to boost the engagement (Biørn-Hansen, 2017). This has
made it significantly easier for all the small and medium-sized enterprises in entering into mobile
commerce (Hedemann, 2018). Any enterprise that is said to be familiar with the Magento it will
be having some good time when it comes to the creation of progressive web apps.
The bottom line: From use to revenue
The facts that some of the retailers have increased and are influenced by digitalization
can neither be said to be new nor surprising to the people. In consideration to heights and looks
made by China in making it clear, Germany has been lagging very far behind, at least with
regards to the generation of revenue. In changing this, the retailers will need to focus on the
needs of the customer needs. This has also been included on the customer experience that may

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go far beyond just merely displaying all the products. Progressive Web apps, this step will be
significantly simplified in the future. A market player that is not digitally present will be ignored
in the digital process of purchase preparation and lose its customers.

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List of References
Ater, T., 2017. Building progressive web apps: bringing the power of native to the browser.
“O’Reilly Media, Inc.".
Biørn-Hansen, A., Majchrzak, T.A. and Grønli, T.M., 2017, April. Progressive Web Apps: The
Possible Web-native Unifier for Mobile Development. In WEBIST (pp. 344-351).
Cieloha, C., 2017. DOES YOUR E-COMMERCE NEED PROGRESSIVE WEB APPS TO
DEVELOP?. [Online] Available at: https://www.ecommerce-nation.com/ecommerce-
progressive-web-apps-develop/ commerce/[Accessed 05 March 2019].
Hedemann, F., 2018. How progressive web apps are stoking mobile commerce. [Online]
Available at: https://dmexco.com/stories/how-progressive-web-apps-are-stoking-mobile-
[Accessed 05 March 2018].
Hume, D.A., 2017. Progressive web apps. Manning Publications Co.
Love, C., 2019. Progressive Web Applications Features Make the Web More App-Like. [Online]
Available at: https://love2dev.com/blog/progressive-web-app-features/ [Accessed 05 March
2019].
Malavolta, I., 2016, October. Beyond native apps: web technologies to the rescue!(keynote).
In Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Mobile Development (pp. 1-2). ACM.
Mollen, A. and Wilson, H., 2010. Engagement, telepresence and interactivity in online consumer
experience: Reconciling scholastic and managerial perspectives. Journal of business
research, 63(9-10), pp.919-925.
simicart.com, 2019. Benefits of a Progressive Web App (PWA) for Your Business. [Online]
Available at: https://www.simicart.com/blog/benefits-of-progressive-web-apps/
[Accessed 05 March 2019].

The role of progressive Web Apps in the E-commerce Spectrum and its influence
over consumer purchase.
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tijsterman, m., 2018. Progressive Web App (PWA) for e-commerce: do or don’t?. [Online]
Available at: https://jmango360.com/blog/progressive-web-app-for-ecommerce-do-or-dont/
[Accessed 05 March 2019].
Yoon, D., Choi, S.M. and Sohn, D., 2010. Building customer relationships in an electronic age:
The role of interactivity of E‐commerce Web sites. Psychology & Marketing, 25(7), pp.602-618.