Magento Announces Availability of PWA Studio

Mobile is changing on- and offline retail and this trend was on full display throughout the 2018 holiday shopping season.

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According to the Adobe Analytics Holiday report, mobile traffic soared with more than half (51.4 percent) of traffic originating from smartphones alone yet mobile accounted for just 31 percent of revenue.

While the gap between mobile traffic and revenues is closing, many retailers still have to crack the code on improving mobile conversion rates and the complexity of building and optimizing experiences across channels.

This week Adobe announced the general release of Progressive Web Applications (PWA), a suite of tools for building online stores with app-like experiences that help merchants solve the mobile conversion dilemma.

It empowers brands to deliver highly personalized cross-channel experiences, in addition to new innovations across Adobe Experience Cloud to help retailers excel in CXM across physical and digital storefronts.

PWA Solves Multiple Challenges for Retailers

When executed properly, native apps can provide an experience that is so frictionless that they provide a much better shopping experience than the desktop (think Apple or Amazon).

The problem is that mobile apps are expensive to build and maintain and consumers only use apps from brands with which they regularly interact.

According to Gartner, most brands cannot expect to convince even 10% of customers to download their app—meaning their mobile website handles the vast majority of customer interactions.

Key to Speedy Sites

This is where PWAs shine: they deliver fast and slick “app-like” experiences in the mobile web browser, allowing retailers to tackle multiple challenges at once:

• Faster Browsing – PWAs are much faster to interact with as well as provide smoother scrolling and transitioning of pages as the experience “progressively” changes thus removing the need for pages to “re-load”. Early adopters such as AliExpress have seen a 100 percent jump in conversion rates since making the switch and Google even provides a testing tool (Lighthouse) so you can benchmark your PWA’s performance
• Instant “App” Gratification – PWAs are instantly discoverable and usable via the browser, thus eliminating the need to “download” or “install” an app before use.
• Push Notifications – An exciting proposition for online marketers is that PWAs support push notifications (on Android devices) in the browser, extending the opportunity for marketers to send real-time, contextual and personalized communications with a simple “one click” opt-in directly from the PWA site.
• Rapid Re-Engagement –  Just like a native app, a PWA can be “saved” to the home screen (on Android devices), allowing for rapid repeat access without the need to open the browser and type in a URL. Furthermore, PWAs operate in “full-screen” mode, hiding the browser URL bar on the top and the browser navigation tools on the bottom of the screen for a native “app-like” look and feel.

While general awareness of PWAs is on the rise, their impact extends far beyond mobile.

PWAs enable functionality such as push notifications and location to be built into the architecture of the website, leveling the playing field for all brands to deliver highly personalized cross-channel experiences at precisely the right time, all at a fraction of the cost of a mobile app.

Retailers, for example, can build contextual in-store capabilities into their PWA such as native integration with the device camera to scan shelf barcodes and integrated payments with Google and Apple Pay for in-store purchases.

The benefit of PWA’s in the store is that they are instantly accessible via the browser, fast and reliable meaning retailers don’t have to connect consumers to their in-store wi-fi to deliver a great mobile experience with their brand.

They also have the potential to open up a whole new world for store associates.

Shoppers expect sales associates to be knowledgeable about online products, which can be a logistical challenge.

Looking forward, PWAs have the potential to replace legacy POS systems and retail associate platforms providing a fast, efficient and cost-effective way for store associates to locate products online and in-store, provide self-checkout, service returns and save the sale and more directly from an employee’s smartphone.

From boosted customer and in-store engagement and higher conversions to lowered development costs, PWAs offer unprecedented opportunities for merchants.

Magento & PWA

By adding PWA to Magento, Adobe is bringing new and innovative technology to the eCommerce platform that benefits every size customer from a small business to a large-scale omnichannel enterprise.

While Magento may have grown up through the Open Source community, Adobe appears to develop Magento to become a premier cloud-based eCommerce platform that embraces today’s technologies to better serve online shoppers.

This is somewhat of a shift, but a necessary shift to meet today’s consumer shopping trends.

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