Managing an e-commerce store may be challenging, especially when the market changes faster than brands can adapt. However, there is a way to offer your customers a more engaging experience while staying flexible and avoiding great investments.In this article, we explain why you need to consider the concept of a progressive web application for your e-commerce store and find out how it fits into a headless e-commerce approach.

What Is a PWA?

PWA stands for a progressive web application. It's a solution that easily takes the form of a native-like app and loads in a browser. Although this technology is relatively new it's been already adopted by leading brands from different industries, including e-commerce retailers.PWAs is a great technology solution for an e-commerce store. It could be integrated with the headless e-commerce concept (headless PWA) to create a separation between the front and back-end of your website.Let's discover PWA's main features and the main benefits.

PWA's Features and Benefits

Progressive web applications could be a perfect fit for e-commerce stores that need to be promoted and scaled fast. Here is why.

A PWA delivers native experience right from the browser. This means that your potential customers don't have to install an app to start shopping. Statistics show that 21% of customers uninstall the app after the first use. With PWA users can interact with your website from the browser and have a similar experience that is provided by native mobile apps.
A PWA loads quickly. Huge e-commerce stores often face the problem of slow loading which results in a high bounce rate and general customer dissatisfaction. PWA solves the problem because it opens, caches, and loads instantly.
A PWA works without an internet connection. And this is the greatest advantage of a progressive application compared to a native one. PWA works without an internet connection since it is completely asynchronous.
A progressive web app may be the last resort for users who use outdated cell phones. It is crucial to ensure these users get the best experience on our website from the browser since you can't improve the mobile experience.
A PWA provides almost native interaction with the help of notifications. Progressive apps are as engaging as the native ones. They can also send notifications and get users back to the app.
PWAs can be well advertised in Google and social media. Even despite their technical uniqueness, progressive apps can be smoothly promoted with SEO-optimized content and social media marketing.

After looking into the main features of PWAs, let's see their main benefits:

PWAs let you avoid official app marketplace restrictions. Publishing a native app in an official app store may be challenging. While things are less complicated with Android apps in Google Play, Apple's policies are much stricter. These restrictions may also be related to the e-commerce store specifics. For example, when a store is selling goods or services that are prohibited in certain counties or states. Since there is no need to publish PWAs in the app store, you don't have to worry about app marketplace rules.
PWAs are good for SEO. While PWAs can't be SEO-optimized as thoroughly as regular websites, they have a considerable advantage speed. In 2021 Google promises to launch a mobile-first indexing engine, where the speed of the application and positive user experience will be among the key factors. As progressive web apps have an offline mode, they can load much faster than native apps or regular websites.
Just as native apps, progressive ones have a lot of room for a personalized experience and allow analyzing customers' behavior. By adopting PWA for your e-commerce store, you will have many options for data collection and analytics, customer retention, as well as marketing strategies development.

Why PWAs Are Good for E-Commerce

Engage your customers with the close-to-native app experience
Reduce bounce rate with a fast site loading
Forget about app marketplaces requirements and the necessity to comply with them
Launch your project faster comparing to native/cross-platform development

Leading retailers shared the results of adopting PWA:

Aliexpress got 104% more users across the browsers.
Jumia achieved 33%+ in conversion rates and lowered their bounce rate by 50%.
Alibaba increased their conversion rate by 77%.
Flipkart increased usersâ€™ dwelling time within the app by 3 times.

Why is a PWA a Great Match With a Headless E-Commerce?

E-commerce stores often have heavy-loaded architectures that are difficult to improve without touching the critical points in user experience.Headless e-commerce is the approach to e-commerce store development which allows to separate back and front-end parts of the app making it more flexible. It opens new ways to enrich the user experience with the help of highly-customized features.

How does a PWA fit into headless e-commerce?

Being a light-weight, user-friendly, and fast-loading technology, PWA is a perfect solution to stay flexible technology-wise and provide the users with the experiences they expect to get.Switching to PWA with a headless e-commerce approach allows you to:

Easily re-platform your store if there is an influx of new users. PWA experience will feel like native no matter what operating system they use.
Make back- and frontend adjustments faster and easier. No lagging behind competitors.
Reduce your bounce rate with PWA's fast loading.
Easily customize your storefront template or theme following user preferences and e-commerce design trends.
Avoid investments in Android and/or iOS native apps.
Go beyond the features your current platform is able to offer.

How B2Storefront can help you?

B2Storenfront is designed to help you with customizing, personalizing, and giving more freedom to your Shopify store or any other platform-based e-commerce store. Our solution provides you with a ready-to-use PWA frontend while leaving a lot of room for unique design ideas.