Progressive Web Apps have emerged as the prominent choice for web development among businesses. It is preferable because of its various benefits, such as fast-loading speed, better user experience, app-like experience, and more.
PWAs are increasing in popularity in web development. Users can install a PWA to their home screen from a web browser and launch it just like a native app. It is a major transition from a website.
For a business, there are multiple benefits of PWAs, like low development cost, rich user experience, and a conducive platform to cater to customers. To clarify, consider the example of Treebo Hotels, Tinder, and other big companies that have benefitted from PWA with increased conversation ratio and decreased loading time.
Keeping your business objective in mind, it is the right time to develop a Progressive Web App for your business. For this, you can partner with the right Progressive Web App development company to make your decision worthwhile.
Keep reading this blog to learn everything you need to develop a Progressive Web App for your business.
Ways to Make a PWA From Your Website
1. Ensure security with HTTPS Protocols
PWAs are highly secured as they work with HTTPS connections. To transform your website into a PWA, ensure that your website is working on the HTTPS protocol.
HTTPS connection is the only way to go with the Progressive web apps. With an HTTPS connection, all data exchanges are served under a secure domain.
But, if your website runs on an HTTP connection, you should include an SSL certificate to make it secure.
Also, you can approach the web host for SSL implementation if you don’t have access to it.
2. Include Modern Head Tags
The first thing to ensure the security of your website is to give proper care to the responsiveness of the website by making it mobile-friendly. And afterward, you can add a Web App Manifest to the <head> tag. The manifest will work on describing the meta information on the website so that it will appear on the user’s home screen.
3. Develop a Manifest File
Every PWA has a Web App Manifest file. But what’s a Web App Manifest? This JSON text file contains all the meta information about your PWA, such as description, scope, start_url, and name.
This information proves helpful for the browsers to know how precisely they should display a PWA as a home-screen icon.
When you’ve entered all the information about your PWA, copy the manifest.json file, create a new “manifest.json” file in your website’s root directory, and paste it there. Then you can link your JSON text file in the <head> tag of all the pages in your PWA.
You can add a particular tag below the tag.
<link rel =”manifest” href=”/manifest.json”>
After successfully validating your PWA, you will get the “Add to Home Screen” link on your manifest section.
4. Add Service Worker to it.
A service worker is a JavaScript file placed in the root of a PWA. It plays the role of a middleman between the host and the browser. Such as, it works on the background of a browser, so when the user is not on the page, it can also work at that time. Plus, you will get notifications even when you are offline.
Service Workers are the essential parts of a PWA. With the help of a service worker, fast loading speed, offline access, push notifications, and other basic features of PWA are achieved.
It gives you the power to take control of the user experience. It also helps in the quality testing of the PWA. A service worker caches the static content to make your PWA work offline.
The first step is to register your service worker in the browser. Afterward, you will get a JSON text file if your browser supports it.
When you are done with the registration of it, you have to generate some files for your service worker with the help of some code commands.
You can easily find these commands on the internet. Just enter them and create the necessary files for your service worker.
You are done with your PWA with all these mandatory steps.
Now the users visiting your website see a prompt installation alert of the PWA on their home screens. Secondly, push notifications and offline functionality will be possible with your website.
5. Test It
Testing is the last phase but an essential step in transforming your existing website into a PWA.
In this stage, you should check whether your service worker got correctly registered and installed. Also, you can run the performance audit of the PWA. Performance audit will give a clear idea that on which aspect you are lagging in developing a PWA or if it is ready to go live.
Alternate Method
Above are the steps for transforming a website into an effective PWA. But what if you need the technical know-how or need more time to work on the PWA? In this case, you can hire web developers for your PWA project.
Hiring the PWA development company is a good step, as they have an innate understanding of the technology. They know the updated tools and methods necessary to create an excellent PWA for your business.
Read more Create Stunning Website without Coding Astra Pro & Elementor Pro.
Conclusion
It is the era where people like to visit those websites that are fast, secure, easy to navigate, run on a low – bandwidth, and take space as low as possible. One solution that has all these attributes is PWA.
It is more like a native application than a website. A PWA has numerous benefits over a website, such as fast speed, quick launch, work offline, always updated, and so on. The primary purpose of developing it is to provide an excellent user experience to mobile and web users.
However, the steps in the blog have given you a clear idea about making a PWA from your website. And if you have yet to switch to it, then it is an excellent time to transform your website into an effective PWA.
