Quick Look: Progressive Web Apps for Magento Websites

You want your Magento website to be attractive, streamlined, and optimized for your clients’ user experience. Magento has implemented a number of changes to benefit companies and users alike. Last spring, the company announced the launch of its state-of-the-art progressive web app studio for eCommerce sites – but what are progressive web apps?

What Are Progressive Web Apps?

PWAs deliver app-like experiences to mobile users while they are on a web browser. They are quite unique and offer a much more streamlined, native experience for your clients without incorporating the hassle of an app. You can check out our overview of Progressive Web Apps for a more detailed description. Mobile apps provide numerous benefits, such as an attractive interface and easy navigation. However, they also have their share of hassles – such as the complication of downloading from the app store and installing multiple updates.

Enter PWAs. These applications combine the attractive features of a mobile app with the convenience and the accessibility of a web browser. Magento’s new PWA Studio streamlines the online shopping experience for your clients, which could increase your conversions and make your website easier to use.

PWAs provide multiple benefits to eCommerce sites, such as:

• The ability to access PWA data online, offline, and on low-quality networks
• The use of the app shell model to implement attractive interaction
• The ability to save apps users find useful on their home screens
• The ability to share the PWA with others, as simple as sharing a link

Magento PWA Studio

In April 2018, Magento announced the launch of its Progressive Web Applications Studio to help Magento clients build better user experiences for mobile shopping and increase their mobile conversion rates. This studio will help you and your Forix web developer deliver fast, simple, and attractive experiences when your clients visit your site on their mobile devices.

The Magento PWA Studio includes unique core features to benefit your business’s website, such as:

• Innovative eCommerce opportunities and an intuitive user experience
• The ability to theme your content management system
• A modularized component architecture
• Numerous tools to help you personalize the PWA content and add local preferences
• Built-in developer tools to help you or your Magento developer debug, collect feedback, prototype PWAs quickly and increase your site’s productivity
• The ability to build and manage all of your website channels through a singular code base, deployment, and app

How Do I Use Magento PWA Studio?

The Magento PWA Studio is a set of developer tools that can help you and your web developer design, develop, and maintain an easy-to-use PWA storefront on your website. There are three main tools you can use to create your Magento PWA:

• Peregrine: Tools to help you create a streamlined user interface to develop your PWA
• PWA-buildpack: Tools to help you create the main build and development for your PWA
• Venia storefront: Tools to help combine your PWA-buildpack and Peregrine components to create your PWA store, including checkout implementation

If you do not already have a developer for your Magento website, you should consider hiring one to help you implement your PWA storefront. Creating an attractive PWA requires significant knowledge about user experience, application interface, and front-end development.

To explore your mobile strategy options, contact the eCommerce experts at Forix today.