10 Best Practices for Building Progressive Web Apps

Does your company thrive on delivering immersive user experiences? Investing in a progressive web application should be a priority for your business!

Progressive web app (PWA), is an innovative way of building websites that blend the best features of mobile apps and websites. It offers an app-like experience through web browsers and does not require users to install mobile apps. Progressive web applications are revolutionizing the web experience for businesses and users. The progressive web app market is estimated to reach $10.44 billion by 2027.

So, are you ready to create a progressive web app for your business and customers? Read this article for practical tips and strategies for cutting-edge application development.

10 Best Practices for Building Progressive Web Apps

While it is fair to say PWAs are trendy and robust, it is essential to remember that not all apps are created equal. Hence, before you start the design and development process, understand these best practices for building progressive web apps.

1. Mobile First, Desktop Second

About 85% of users think a website should appear and work the same or better than its desktop website. It implies eliminating unexpected barriers to your website when a visitor views it on a tablet or phone.

A PWA is a website impersonating a mobile app. Therefore, ensuring it is easy to use on all devices and screen sizes becomes important. It is also essential to consider broad compatibility and comprehensive testing across various operating systems and browsers.

PWAs use Progressive Enhancement to complement feature detection and enable universal functionality. You must understand the diversity of browsers users may use and build a solution that caters to a wide range.

2. Simplify Steps for Users

Users expect the websites to load fast and work flawlessly. However, what else they also want is to perform as few actions as possible themselves. Hence, you must ensure all the steps are easy to perform in your application.

Common tasks in a PWA are filling out forms, logging in, and making payments. Using advanced tools and techniques can help simplify these steps for your users.

For example, the HTML autocomplete attribute allows visitors to use the previously saved data for completing the forms. Similarly, offering multiple payment gateways will ensure seamless transactions.

3. The Simpler, The Better

The need for PWAs to appear simple and feel like an actual app can never be overstated. Simplicity is the entire point, and yet, many frequently overlook it. Customizing your app based on your specific market expectations and customer segment is wise.

Listed below are some best practices for PWAs you can follow to create an easy-to-use yet impressive platform:

• Set a performance budget to prioritize essential assets and eliminate unnecessary and confusing buttons and elements.
• Use responsive images and media that can be scaled appropriately for every device and viewport without compromising quality.
• Deliver your application from Content Delivery Network to reduce latency and provide content across multiple servers.

4. Optimise Loading Times

More than 50% of users leave websites that take more than 3 seconds to load. Apps loading speed and performance can significantly impact user experience and retention. As a result, adding impressive features and simple navigation does not matter if your app is slow.

Progressive web apps focus on providing websites as fast as possible. The app shell structure is one of the ways you can reduce the load times.

PWAs present dynamic content with similar header, footer, and other app shell components. As a result, while new content comes with each new page view, these elements are loaded once and ensure a fast and reliable user experience.

5. Support Offline Experiences

A PWA should deliver a seamless experience. You must ensure your application works consistently in offline conditions or slow or unreliable networks. Most apps function offline; therefore, creating a progressive web app that does the same is ideal.

Users looking for an app-like experience should be able to access app functionalities without an internet connection. For instance, allow users to compose and save an email, which gets sent automatically once the device regains connectivity.

You can design a visually appealing offline page that informs users about their connection status and explains why certain features may be unavailable. This page will offer a consistent, engaging experience across devices and replace browser errors.

6. Create a Web App Manifest

It is a JSON file that facilitates information about a PWA to the browser. It helps you control your app’s appearance to the users and its launch. A Web App Manifest includes various crucial information about an appointment; for instance:

• The authoritative name and a condensed name version of the website.
• The theme color and background color of the website for the OS integration.
• Orientation restrictions.
• Add icons to the home screen to make your website professional.

7. Security and Privacy

Securing user data is one of the critical aspects of building a progressive web app. Since a PWA is only installable when served over HTTPS, it makes sense to use HTTPS protocol for data protection.

HTTPS protocol encrypts data to ensure the data transmission is entirely confidential and safe from prying eyes. It also confirms whether the server you are communicating with is the one it claims to be to prevent virtual attacks. Here are some ways to mitigate security risks:

• Leverage third-party scripts and resources from reputable and trusted sources.
• Implement a system to monitor and detect malicious activities related to third-party resources.
• Use CSP (Content Security Policies) to restrict the types of third-party scripts that can be loaded on your application.

8. Works with any Input Type

Progressive web applications are easily usable with any input device type and work seamlessly with a stylus, keyboard, mouse, or touch screen. An ideal app must support all viewports, and its input method should not depend on screen size.

Here are some best practices for building progressive web apps that are equally usable with any input method:

• Use the correct semantic elements to ensure accessibility and support the usage of any input method.
• Enhance experiences to enable input-specific controls wherever appropriate.
• Ensure users can activate interactions with a click or tap.

9. Comprehensive Testing

It is a well-known fact that websites are never finished. There are always areas for improvement, and collecting feedback from your users is one way to identify them.

Your regular users and visitors to PWA can offer information regarding what you need to improve in your app. Say, for instance, better navigation elements or button placements for optimal mobile use.

You can test your PWA using software like Search Console for technical improvements. Meanwhile, Microsoft’s Clarity and Hotjar can give you a hand in measuring user experience.

10. App Store Distribution

It is not necessary to deploy progressive web apps in app stores. However, it is possible. Although many users typically save an app to their home screen, many browse through the app store first.

Submit your app to the preferred app store, pass the specific requirements, and publish your solution. But, if you are working on developing a solution, a niche audience will seek out your app. A simple link would suffice in such cases and help users open it in a browser and save it.

You can follow some easy steps to publish your PWAs in all popular app stores, including Apple, Google, and Microsoft. While it requires additional services, app store distribution can increase the visibility your app gains.

Conclusion

Progressive web apps have slowly emerged as the future of the user experience on desktop and mobile devices. You can develop one to offer the best of both worlds – desktop, and mobile, to your users. Its seamless accessibility, ease of development, and enriching experience similar to native apps make it an innovative choice.

PWAs are known as the future of the web. Their reliability, quick installation, fast loading, push alerts, and network assistance can help increase user engagement and conversions. Using discussed best practices for PWAs can simplify your work and provide a dependable and engaging user experience.

FAQs on 10 Best Practices for Building Progressive Web Apps

What is a progressive web app, and why should I develop one?

A Progressive Web App (PWA) is a web application with an app-like experience. These apps can help companies increase user engagement, improve conversion rates, and reduce bounce rates.

What technologies are necessary to develop a progressive web app?

Employing modern web technologies like HTTPS, Web App Manifest, and Service Workers is ideal for building a PWA. Progressive web app developers can use frameworks and libraries like Angular and React.

What are the primary features of a PWA?

Offline access, responsive design, wicker load times, add-to-home prompt, secure connection, and push notifications are some key features users can expect from progressive web apps.