About PWA - Progressive Web Apps
- Type of web app that can operate both as a web page and mobile app on any device.
- PWA is written in JS, CSS, and HTML, coming up with Google.
- Can work offline, uploaded to popular app marketplaces (AppStore, Google Play, etc).
- It supports all browsers and platforms, almost mobile devices, some others are not due to its under-development process.
- Main advantages:
- Loads instantly even on the poor network connection
- Better UX (User Experience) thanks to the quickly responds to user interactions
- It feels like a natural app on the device
PWA's benefits
The Gartner Report projects that by 2020, 50% of "general-purpose, consumer-facing" native mobile apps will be replaced by PWA.
- Lower development cost: It works on all kinds of devices so you don't need to develop other separate apps for iOS and Android.
- Better performance: Requires minimal network (even work on 2G network), can function offline, etc.
- Faster App-like Experience: PWA uses less space, and updating an app is unnecessary.
- Decreased CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost): Installing an app directly from a mobile browser will increase the chances that your customers will go. Also with its good performance, a poor network won't decrease your sales anymore.
- Support Headless Commerce: It uses headless architecture which helps your marketing team become independent from developers and can easily make changes on their own.
Explore Shopware 6 PWA
- Created in cooperation with Vue Storefront, focus on providing a great API while Vue Storefront makes sure that the Shopware PWA is efficient, fast, and adapted to the mobile world.
- Another Frontend beside Shopware 6 full-stack architecture source. Ways to build individual customer experiences on a business level except for experience-driven brands.
- What makes it different from similar solutions?
- With Vue Storefront, building PWA's next-generation applications on years of experience and best practices.
- Supports the CMS (Content Management System), with this, you can define Frontend layouts in your Shopware's Admin panel and design visual experiences connecting static data as well as dynamic content with mappings to your products or category information.
- Shopware Plugins can provide resources by request through the Admin API at build time.
Is Shopware PWA a right solution
Choosing a headless approach will increase the initial complexity of your project.
And absolutely Frontend team must have basic knowledge about Vue and its framework NuxtJS.
If you can adapt to the above requirements, Shopware PWA is your solution cause it comes with some smart mechanisms like ahead-of-time bundling & compilation or ES tree-shaking. This helps you improve the nature of PWA's weakens - SEO killer (When you try to build a high-performing frontend - just as for any other approach)
Conclusion
Choosing technical and deciding on a solution is one of many steps in the development process. I hope this article can help you complete it. Thanks for reading, have a nice day 😌.