Technologies are changing at a fast pace. Every day, new technology gets launched in the tech market. Recently, PWA- a popular mobile app development term, attracted large brands. Progressive Web Apps (PWA) technology is creating a buzz in the eCommerce market.
On the other hand, Responsive Web Design is the common way to create intuitive eCommerce stores that meet the immense demand of mobile users. To buy something, you need to download native apps from the stores. Mobile app technology has evolved to get compatible with all devices.
Progressive web apps and Responsive websites are the ways for businesses to get prospective buyers online. They reduce the dependency on mobile phones, from shopping to booking to paying online.
Both PWAs and RWAs are similar. Therefore, it puts you in a dilemma when you need to choose one of them. You will learn about the pros and cons of each in this article.
Table of Contents
What are Progressive Web Apps?
The progressive web application is a web application that acts like a native app. They are developed using JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. Websites built with it are powerful, fast, and reliable to use on web browsers, just like apps.
It includes all the mobile application features, such as push notifications, offline functionality, filtering option, easy checkout, etc.
- Manifest File: It is a JSON file that offers metadata to install PWA. This manifest file helps determine how PWA looks on the user’s home screen.
- Service workers: It works as a middle layer between the PWA front-end and website backend. It makes all the features possible to use in PWA. Any changes won’t affect its working as it runs independently.
- HTTPS Protocols Having secure and encrypted transactions between user and website ensures a threat-free shopping experience. Furthermore, HTTPS prevents the website from any cyberattacks.
🔥 Best PWA Examples: Twitter-Lite, Pinterest, Uber, Aliexpress, etc.
Pros and Cons of Progressive Website Applications
- PWA loads much faster to enhance the website performance for customers.
- They are compatible with old and new web browsers, including Chrome, Firefox, etc.
- Create better user engagements as they can work offline.
- It provides cross-browser compatibility features and fits on different screen sizes, irrespective of device types.
- Users can access PWA from the home screen icon.
- Engage more customers using advanced PWA features, such as push notifications and web push protocol.
- They are quite expensive to develop and maintain in the long run.
- Progressive apps consume more battery than native apps.
- PWA is incapable of accessing features of different devices.
What is a Responsive Website?
Responsive websites are also a new web development method for creating a website for desktop and mobile interfaces. It is designed with stack web technologies, such as Ruby, JavaScript, HTML, and CSS.
Responsive web apps were first described in 2010 by Ethan Marcotte. Also, they are developed to cater to the demands of users from different geolocation, platform, orientation, and devices.
- Fluid Grids: Responsive web design with fluid Grids can fit on various screen sizes. It adapts to any new screen resolution.
- Responsive Images: Web Images are not fluid. You can resize any image according to the screen resolution using some configurations.
- CSS Media: Web pages are not technically responsive if there are no added CSS media queries. Besides providing a better user experience, it can customize websites to run seamlessly on different devices.
Best RWA Examples: Wired, Dropbox, Amazon, YouTube, etc.
Pros and Cons of Responsive Web Design
- A user-friendly and adaptable user interface for all on-screen devices.
- Responsive webs are cost-effective as they are cheaper to build and maintain.
- RWA can be indexed on search engines and improve SEO rankings of websites.
- Easy to integrate social media channels.
- It cannot work offline, whereas PWAs can cache large data offline.
- Time-consuming to create Responsive web applications from scratch.
- Developers feel a waste of time in converting an old website into a responsive web.
- Designers face difficulties in managing the fluid-structure of RWA.
- RWA lacks connectivity features as well.
- You can’t add RWA to the home screen.
- You need to write separate code for various devices and platforms.
One Common Thing Between RWA and PWA
Responsive websites and progressive website applications are similar in some cases. So, they are easy to crawl by popular search engines. Moreover, both are powerful technologies to engage customers with optimized website content. They can increase brand awareness and boost conversion rates to gain more sales.
Final Note
Responsive applications vs Progressive mobile applications is a long battle. Almost all businesses are adopting them to expand their reach to the audience. As you’ve learned that both the technologies have a set of pros and cons to figure out which one will work best for you and your customers.
