Technical view on PWAs

If we dive back in time a few years, we saw that all companies invested in a website, an iPhone app, and an Android app. Each of these three different components looked roughly the same, offered similar functionalities, but each had to be developed separately. Result: it costs you three times time and money to develop one application for three different platforms.

Therefore, in recent years, an alternative approach has been gaining popularity: the PWA. You develop a single app based on web technologies. During development, you make sure that it also functions smoothly on mobile platforms. As a result, you get a uniform application that looks the same on all the various platforms and has the same functionalities. The big advantage? You only have to pay a development cost once.

Tailr's approach starts with the 'W' of PWA: web. Tailr's experts first focus on building a reliable and flexible web application. This development process proceeds in two parts.

On the one hand, the API - the backend - is built in Symfony. These are the brains of the application: they make the necessary data available and process it. It is extremely important this layer works very reliably and thoughtfully. To ensure that as little can go wrong as possible, this layer is extensively tested at all levels via automated tests.

On the other hand, they build the front-end in open-source framework NextJS. This platform provides our developers with the necessary tools to optimize performance. For instance, they develop super-fast static HTML pages: because they can be fully cached on proxies and directly in your browser. The pages within the application are directly built responsive, so they look good on all sizes of screens.

This combination of front-end and backend serves as an ideal basis to start a PWA. Thus, the current web application is already optimized for mobile screens, so the app gets launched quickly. Plus: the data is delivered reliably.

When these components of your web application are strong, you have a solid basis to develop your PWA. You easily convert the web application to a PWA that you install on your mobile phone. Beware: the PWA will already work fine but is not yet optimized for mobile use at that point. Only from this stage do our developers gradually build the mobile features, for example: push notifications and access to your smartphone's mobile camera.

Overall, the future of PWAs looks promising. On the one hand you have the growing adoption of PWAs in the business world. Their fast load times, reliable performance and offline access are some of the advantages why a PWA is increasingly being chosen.

On the other hand: technological advances should not be overlooked either. Both the technologies that enable PWAs and web standards continue to be optimized, only making them more powerful and useful.

In addition, costs also play a big role. By focusing on a web application, you already save the cost of building native apps for iPhone and Android. Plus, you can put the web application online in different phases. That way, you facilitate quick user feedback and can improve the platform to your customers' needs.

Once the web application is ready and optimized for use, you easily transform the web app into a PWA by activating it configurative. At that stage, most of the work will probably go into defining your mobile strategy. For example: how do you get your users to install the PWA on their home screen?

After launching the PWA, you easily add additional mobile features. The fact that you can easily extend a PWA also makes it a budget-friendly choice. You don't get all features of the PWA are functional from day one, but you can release them gradually.

Technological advances, improved web standards and cross-platform compatibility make PWAs an increasingly attractive alternative to developing native apps. As mobile browsers and PWAs also increasingly work better on mobile platforms - for example, addressing mobile functionalities directly from a web application - the need for native apps is also slowly shrinking.

So, at Tailr, we do not necessarily consider a PWA as a goal, but rather as an alternative output for an application we have already built. Because by focusing on the web application first, you can easily upgrade to a PWA afterwards and gradually add mobile functionalities.

Are you convinced of the qualities of a PWA for your online services? Then contact our experts without obligation. We will be happy to help you with a solution tailored to your professional needs.