Creating a desktop website is one of the many steps involved in taking your business into the world of e-commerce. Simple as it may sound, it takes meticulous research and homework to accomplish. You have to find an allrounder e-commerce platform and work on it till you make sure that your buyers get the best experience out of it.
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A Seamless User Experience is what makes a business successful
Needs, Wants and Choices are changing with people’s evolving lifestyles. Everything a person needs, they can get it with just a few taps on their cellphones. Almost everyone can relate to this in 2019. ‘Ease’ and ‘Convenience’ are two major drivers to provide an excellent user experience to your consumers.
Shift from desktop to mobile
Mobile internet has grown 504% in daily media consumption since 2011. If we take a look at the Mobile apps that are available, in July 2009 only 65,000 apps used to be available on the App Store. This number has increased to 3.262 billion in 2019.
Ever wondered why is it so?
A huge change in the lifestyle of people has made the mobile platform very popular and widely used. And it’s all because of mobile apps. Mobile apps are so mainstream these days that brands are promoting their apps more than they are actually focussing on their respective desktop web apps (e.g. Ola, Zomato, Uber, Amazon).
Who knew mobile apps would become a huge channel for businesses to focus on?
Starting with small functionalities like mobile ringtones and mobile wallets, the Technology behind them has come a long way. Several companies like Amazon, Zomato, Flipkart, etc. have been pushing their mobile apps for quite some time. Amazon now has mobile apps for their ‘Prime’ customers providing video streaming services which have a lot of patrons.
But technology never stops evolving, say hello to Progressive Web Applications
Progressive Web Apps (PWA) is a mobile application dispensed via the internet. It provides the same UX as a regular native mobile app but is accessible via a browser. They are very much like native mobile apps but there are some fundamental differences you should know about.
PWAs vs Native Mobile Apps
There has been a debate for quite sometime questioning the utility of native apps after the inception of PWAs. Questions like “Will PWAs make native apps obsolete?” have come into the fray time and time again. There has been no definite answer but PWA is definitely the future of mobile commerce and is here to stay.
Some key benefits of PWA that may catch your eye
- Since PWAs are based on mobile-first architecture, they are truly mobile-ready and can run on any device.
- Progressive web apps consolidates the experience of a native app with added connectivity to the internet. It runs efficiently both as a website and a native app.
- They cost less time and money to be developed and can even save a lot on maintenance.
- It can function offline, which allows the shopper to continue browsing even without an internet connection.
- A progressive web app loads at least 2-3 times faster compared to mobile-responsive sites (m.dot).
- With faster loading time, progressive web applications reduces server load as it loads up very quickly. Your online store won’t come down crashing during heavy traffic.
- Progressive web apps are lightweight and require only 15-20% of the storage space which an average native app would consume.
StoreHippo uses the right tools
Our ecommerce platform, StoreHippo is armed with the lastest MEAN Stack technology which can easily provide your business with an easy to manage and a mobile-ready platform. It will eliminate the need for a native app and you can manage your online store on the go, hassle-free. Gain an edge over your competitors by providing a simplistic UI and unparalleled UX to your customers.
PWAs with StoreHippo
StoreHippo likes to be caught up with the latest technological advancements and you just can’t ignore what our mobile-ready platform has to offer.
Your online stores built on storeHippo platform are powered by the PWA architecture with the help of MEAN Stack.
It lets your web application to be faster, engaging and provide an uninterrupted shopping experience across devices. Progressive web applications enable your website to be available even on poor internet connections. StoreHippo has been using web apps technology to build ecommerce stores since 2014. All stores built on StoreHippo are PWA and offer all the listed advantages to retailers. Explore the difference that can set the wheels of success turning for you.
5 Reasons why give StoreHippo’s platform a chance
1. No installation required, Save up the device’s storage space
PWAs are fundamentally websites, and it runs on browsers only. It relies on a 'plug n play' sort of principle, avoiding the dull process of installing an app. All you have to do is click the link and simply access it just like a normal website. You can access the pages quickly, navigate to different segments of the app and even take care of the checkout carts seamlessly. This helps in saving a lot of storage space (up to 25%) in mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. Storage space these days is an important commodity in mobile devices and is one of the major benefits of PWA over native apps.
2. Maintain them with extreme ease
Native apps are helpful and handy but maintaining the same can cost you a lot. Platform-specific applications, be it from Android or Apple, would burn a massive hole in your pocket. You have to hire a developer on retainer as all kinds of apps need continuous monitoring, regular bug fixes, and important updates.
With our web apps based on PWA architecture, you can save a lot of money and effort on development and maintenance since different versions for different platforms and devices are not needed.
3. Improve your SEO with minimum effort
With the implementation of PWA, your website's SEO ranking substantially improves as they are practically webpages and are indexed better. The reason behind this is that Google Analytics, SEO, Google Ads don't work with native applications. It's one of the reasons Google is encouraging the use of PWAs, which can enable you to use marketing tools from Google's Marketing Platform. Google is even planning on listing PWAs to Google Play Store pretty soon.
4. Give your customers an app-like experience, even if they’re offline
Imagine, if you are riding in your cab and you get to a place with poor or no network coverage, or you accidentally lose internet connection. With PWA, you can still browse and finish whatever you were doing (e.g. Trivago, Flipkart). New content is cached using Service Workers, and local/offline changes are synchronized to a local server. Once you provide the necessary access, they will send you 'Push' notifications as well.
This is one of the most attractive features you can provide your customer if connections drops or poor network is an issue in their locale.
5. A Complete Technology making mobile commerce effortless
PWA is the hottest technology trend as it bridges the gap between mobile web and native apps. Supported by Google, it has matured over the years and makes it very easy to work with and achieve the desired objectives of mobile ecommerce. With the help of APIs, these apps can easily send you ‘push’ notifications to keep the engagement active and give you a straightforward checkout flow.
PWAs are not only fast and efficient but they can give your marketing efforts a kickstart. More than 60% of internet users search on mobile making your website accessible at fingertips and potentially increasing your conversions by 68%.
Conclusion
Our complete mobile-ready e-commerce platform, StoreHippo is the right solution if you want to provide your customers with the same.
With our PWA architecture, you can take your business to the same heights as these major players. Reward your customer’s loyalty with convenience and comfort and live up to your customer's expectations with PWA. Be among the business owners who are willing to invest in their consumer's happiness despite a highly competitive market. It can help you with both enhancing the consumer’s experience and stay afloat in the market. And with Google behind this gift of technology, you can be sure that it’s future is bright. Don't hesitate !!!!
Sign up for StoreHippo's trial version and check out the capabilities of PWA yourself.
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