PWA: definition, interest and future of Progressive Web Applications

PWA is the abbreviation for a progressive web app, that is to say an application type environment accessible from a mobile browser without going through an application store like the App Store or Google Play.

In other words, it's an optimized way to display a website for mobile, with all the constraints that mobile needs for a good user experience: fluidity, speed and design adapted to the format of the smartphone.

The PWA then allows to display a website on mobile as if it were a mobile application, with the difference that This app is NOT available on the app market to download (App Store and Play Store for example).

In terms of development costs for the site, and accessibility and user experience on the user side, it was quite simply a digital revolution, not to mention the fact that this brought down the barrier to entry to the Stores, who benefit from a situational annuity as well as “customs fees”, in a way, by recovering a commission on each financial transaction carried out via the mobile application, a bit like a Booking or a UberEATS. In addition, Stores required “in-app” payments for transactions, which did not help matters for small developers.

Furthermore, the other concern is that the native mobile universe coupled with the explosion of social networks, have literally "killed" the historical web, the one which was done on HTML and PHP pages, and which was for suddenly, much more democratic. Not to mention the pop-ups for cookies, which have finished off the “classic” web by making it unusable.

What is the future of progressive web apps? For the moment, professionals in the sector remain mixed about them, and are observing with interest the evolution of practices, between the hegemony of app stores and total openness without an intermediary app download market. But on the Stores side, Apple signaled the end of the break, announcing in March 2024 the end of support for PWAs on iOs. Reason given: the overly complex maintenance work that would have been necessary to ensure.

Moreover, on the user side, the functionality has unfortunately not yet taken. Lay people are often not aware that they can indirectly “install” a website on their home screen, at least for the shortcut icon, at best for optimized access in “PWA” mode.

However, the QR Code had great difficulty being democratized, but it ended up establishing itself through advertising in particular. Will Progressive Web Apps experience the same fate? Nothing is less certain, unless, ironically, it is both advertising and QR Codes which end up introducing this type of applications to the general public, via advertising displays for example? However, this would be unlikely, because brands that have the means to advertise generally have the means to afford a native mobile application.

And you what do you think ? Is it still worth offering your site in PWA format?