Reimagining Customer Experiences With Magento Progressive Web Apps (PWA)

  Magento is the global leader in eCommerce solutions and 300,000+ websites worldwide use Magento as their eCommerce platform. One of the biggest challenges faced by eCommerce businesses and Magento site owners is driving optimal customer engagement through compelling shopping experiences.  

In this article, we will explore how to overcome the user experience challenges by leveraging cutting-edge technologies. 

In a world that’s becoming customer-first, brands are striving hard to delight their customers with unparalleled customer service. 

What does this mean to the eCommerce industry? 

As online purchase has become an increasingly popular behavior, it is imperative for businesses to strengthen their online presence with easy and flexible shopping options. In the eCommerce space, providing unparalleled customer service means delivering unforgettable user experiences to the customers. 

Does that sound very simple? But it’s also equally tricky.

So, let’s list down the factors that make user experience complex and difficult.

⛔ What are the roadblocks in providing a compelling user experience to your shoppers?

❎ Slow loading pages

Slow loading pages are one of the biggest turnoffs to an eCommerce shopper. The attention span of a digital shopper is reaching new lows. Expecting the customers to wait until the pages load is unfair, especially in the midst of numerous digital distractions. Guess what? It’s surveyed that, over 73% of websites lose their visitors to a competitor because of poor page speeds. 

❎ Poor user experience for mobile devices

The importance of mobile-friendly and mobile-first eCommerce design is paramount. The growth in the number of mobile users is astronomical and by 2025, it is expected that 70%+ shoppers will be from mobile devices. Not all eCommerce sites are keeping pace with this growing trend. Even today, there are umpteen numbers of eCommerce sites that are not responsive and mobile-friendly. 

❎ Changing customer expectations

Shoppers come from different environments with varying expectations. But that shouldn’t be limiting you from providing the experiences that they demand. Here’s where a lot of eCommerce websites fail. Some of the shoppers prefer to shop on the apps while others prefer web pages. They may also use multiple browsers, devices, and there could be shoppers from limited or poor internet environments. Providing a seamless, unified, and satisfying experience to all these shoppers - regardless of their browsers, devices, connectivity - is more than challenging. 

❎ Other user experience challenges

Listed below are other challenges in meeting the user experience expectations:

💣 Building different app experiences for iOS and Android

💣 Problems in integrating native device features like camera, GPS, etc.

💣 Time, cost, expertise, and resources needed to build and deliver a great user experience

💣 Challenges in engaging the shopper and helping them accomplish their goals on the storefront

What does this mean in the business and revenue context?

⏳ Less time spent on your store

📉 Higher bounce rates (This hurts your SEO badly)

😶 Lack of customer engagement

👎 Low conversion rates

⛔ Poor returns on your investment

But that’s not the end of the story.

With great problems comes great solutions.

💡 Here’s how to solve the user experience challenges with progressive web apps:

The good news is that user experience challenges can be overcome with the help of a new-gen technology called Progressive Web Apps. Abbreviated as PWA, it refers to the novel technology that combines the best of both mobile and web applications. PWAs not only come with a mobile-first approach, but they also provide an app-like experience to the shoppers. 

Magento, the worldwide leader in cloud digital commerce innovation, provides best-in-class progressive web application solutions with their homegrown suite of tools for building online stores with app-like experiences. 

Magento offers an integrated PWA solution for eCommerce websites with a mission to help businesses embrace fast-changing digital commerce technologies. Magento PWA solutions come with a fully decoupled front-end and an expansive back-end technology suite. 

Using PWAs, Magento site owners can build their own high-performance web and mobile experiences, which will enhance user engagement, increase conversion rates, and diversify revenue streams.

7 Stunning features of PWAs [that boost your Magento store’s performance]

🌟 Speed - PWAs help your Magento store load faster even on slow networks.

🌟 Responsiveness - Leverage PWAs to power your Magento store with a consistent experience on all devices: desktops, tablets, and mobile devices.

🌟 Security - PWA sites use highly secure HTTPS connections for enhanced security.

🌟 Browser Compatibility - With the help of PWAs, you can make your Magento stores work equally well on all modern browsers like Edge, Chrome, Safari, Firefox, etc.

🌟 Offline Access - Your Magento stores powered by PWAs make use of cache content to ensure that the store’s content can be served. This helps to engage a user with limited or poor internet access.

🌟 Easy URL Sharing - With PWAs, your Magento site will have a unique URL that can be easily shared with other apps and social media.

🌟 Easy Mobile Installs - Your mobile users can add the PWA sites to their home screens to foster easy, quick, and handy access.

📣 Boost your Magento store performance with PWAs

Here’s a list of insights on how PWAs can enhance the shopping experience and overall performance of your Magento store: 

1️⃣ Increase the loading speed of all the pages on your eCommerce store

2️⃣ Shorten the time taken for store development (and adding any new features)

3️⃣ Improve the page sessions, the time your shoppers spend on your store 

4️⃣ Thereby, reduce the bounce rate considerably 

5️⃣ Increase the number of pages your shoppers navigate during every session

6️⃣ Enhance the mobile experience and increase the conversion rates

7️⃣ Engage customers through effective push notifications

8️⃣ Reduce the cart abandonment rates especially on mobile devices

9️⃣ Optimize your development cost and save time and money

🔟 Acquire and engage new customers from all browsers

📣 Here are the SEO benefits of Magento PWA

✅ PWAs make your Magento store user-friendly as well as Engine-friendly 

✅ The SEO-rich features make enable easy and faster indexing of your Magento site

✅ Progressive Web Apps are not dependent on the app distribution platforms. So, with PWAs, you don’t have to invest in app store optimization separately

✅ With faster and smoother page loads, your Magento store is not only loved by the customers but also by the search engines. PWAs are ranked better on search engines.

✅ PWAs guarantee low bounce rates powered by fostered engagement through UX-rich features and conversion-centric elements.

✅ Re-engage customers through push notifications and improve returning visitors and sessions that boost the SEO-friendliness of the website.

📣 Here is a 15-point comparative checklist that sheds insight into the different features and benefits of native apps, responsive websites, and Magento PWAs

📣 How are your customers benefitted if you build a PWA Storefront on Magento

🔍 Easy Product Discovery – Since the search engines can easily find the content in the Progressive Web Apps, customers can readily land on the product pages on your Magento store. Also, PWAs come with UX-rich features that facilitate the shoppers with easy navigation and product discovery.

🔗 Linkable – Unlike traditional stores built on native apps, every page of your store comes with a direct link that your shoppers can share instantly and easily.

🔖 Easy & Quick Bookmarks – Your shoppers can bookmark your web pages, or add the PWAs to their home screens, and save that link to access the app handily.

🕣 Fresh and up-to-date shopping feed – The best thing about PWAs is that they are always up-to-date. Your shoppers don’t have to update the app on the app stores manually. Every time they open the PWA store, they consume the most recently updated version.

📱Space & Data Saving – As a shopper, downloading an app to use it is expensive for them in terms of effort, internet data, as well as phone space. If you build your storefront on Magento PWA, your shoppers can save storage space, data, as well as time. 

PWA is the future of eCommerce. Is your Magento store future-ready? 

The world of eCommerce businesses is evolving at a staggering pace. In a matter of no time, Progressive Web Apps will become common and a must-build feature. It’s about time to build your PWA Storefront on Adobe Commerce. 

Lastly, here are 3 reasons before we wrap up:

1️⃣ Easily build seamless and app-like shopping experiences. Build the exact experience that you (and your customers) want

2️⃣ Save time spent on building and managing standalone user experiences. Reduce your hosting costs with unified storefront and backend

3️⃣ Get all the tools to personalize your content, add local preferences, etc. Manage all your channels and experiences with a single code base

Enough said about the significance and striking benefits of PWAs for your Magento store, it’s now time to get started. If you need a free consultation on how to power your Magento store, you can get in touch with our experts. 

You can also try our FREE Progressive Web Apps Audit that helps you

• assess your website’s PWA-readiness 
• evaluate where you stand in providing a PWA-like experience to your customers
• identify rooms for enhancing the overall shopping experience
• define the next-best steps to make your store PWA-ready