The Benefit of Connecting with a Progressive Web Application

In the  digital age, we depend on applications (apps) and websites to be connected and informed.  Whether using a phone, tablet, or computer; a browser is generally the primary tool to access content.  These habits and practices have opened the door to new technologies.  

Progressive Web Application (PWA) are websites you can access through modern browsers like Chrome, Edge, Firefox, and Safari.  Unlike other websites, a PWA will download the website onto the device, giving it the look and feel of a native application (phone app).  While there are many advantages in using a PWA as a user, the benefits for a company are countless.   As a startup company, Charter and Go seeks efficiencies in costs and time, which a PWA helps achieve.  They are by nature a true single source code stack.  No extra compiling is needed which allows developers to focus on building one instance of the application. This translates to less time spent on mundane development tasks and more focus on the user experience. 

There are studies that show a direct correlation between repeated users and response time of an application.  A PWA takes this into account by using service workers which runs in the background of the browser giving the benefits of advance caching, preemptive network calls, and push notifications.  Advance caching allows a PWA to be saved as an application on the device.  In other words, it allows the user to access the webpage through what looks like any other phone app.    

The PWA will look and feel like a native phone app downloaded from an app store, including offering users an offline-first experience. Additionally, data will sync in the background when network coverage is available, keeping users supplied with the latest information.

Preemptive Network pre-renders the next page into cache anticipating the user’s needs.  By leveraging this, they can minimize the users’ wait time and increase their overall experience.  Service workers utilize special software that is specific to the phone’s operating system (OS) and allows the application to supply push notifications.  This in turn increases the percentage of return visits  to your site. 

With rapidly changing technologies, users have come to expect a level of intuitive behaviors when interacting with software or web pages.  By using technologies that offer a single source of code, companies will be able to focus less on multiple platforms and more on the user experience (UX).   Many languages like Xamarin, React Native, and Flutter claim to be cross platform, but each of these frameworks deploy multiple packages that are compiled down into the OS native language.  This ultimately causes complexities for developers because they eventually must solve unique issues that arise from each version of the OS, taking critical attention away from the user experience.

What makes a PWA a true single source code is the fact that it does not depend on the OS to build and deploy.  A PWA lives on the browser that has been made to look and act like an application.  If you are interested in other examples of these PWA’s check out Starbucks or Flipboard. 

PWAs give the flexibility and dependability that cater to a companies’ needs.  When looking for a solution the most important concerns are reliability, ease of use, and how efficient it is for development and maintenance. By embracing the progressive web, Charter and Go plans to exceed all expectations by having a solution which is always available, clean, intuitive, and will never need to be updated by the user.  With our customer centric philosophy,  Charter and Go uses progressive web apps to bring the user an application that they can trust and depend on.  

Demietrius Huff – VP of Front-End Development