Is an investment in PWA profitable?

More and more entrepreneurs express interest in the Progressive Web App for their stores. Often, however, they have doubts about PWA’s rate of return on investment.

The objections result from differences in the conversion rate for desktops and mobile devices. It is a cause of uncertainty of success between people who choose to build a PWA website for their store.

Most mobile users use online stores without purchasing, contrary to desktop users. To increase the conversion rate on phones and tablets, you should optimize using the right tools. Thanks to that, the site will become maximally responsive, easy and quick to use. It’s important to use the full potential offered by PWA in order to ensure the best User Experience. This will translate directly into the conversion rate. If your website does not meet the market requirements, the conversion rate will remain unchanged.

Divante Software House’s numerous case studies show that the typical increase in the conversion rate thanks to the Progressive Web App rises up to 36%. For a seller making, for example, 500,000 zlotys a year, this is an additional profit of 180,000. Only thanks to PWA. ROI in this case, described in the American realities by Tom Karwatka, the director of the company creating the software for e-commerce, becomes positive within one year.

If you consider that the PWA website for an online store doesn’t need to be developed from scratch, and you can apply a template that will later be personalized, ROI will be positive following just 4 months. That implies even quicker and higher incomes, thanks to the tools offered for the analysis of e-commerce based on the Progressive Web App. If you ignore the benefits of PWA’s mobile sales for the next 6 months, you may lose  15 to 40 thousand PLN in potential mobile sales.

The Lighthouse tool, created by Google, is used by developers to research and improve the quality of applications in browsers. This has a positive effect on the long-term maintenance of the website. It is done with the help of automated tools, by auditing the website.

These tools are integrated with Chrome DevTools. It is managed by a command line or straight from the browser. They are applied to study issues in PWA, SEO, site performance, Best Practice and website availability for people with disabilities.

Lighthouse audit can be performed on every website. Including online stores. Because many entrepreneurs and users have already switched to mobile platforms, Lighthouse can be the best tool for testing e-commerce performance.

The test takes 60 to 90 seconds and does not necessarily have to be carried out by the developer. It consists of a series of tests for known problems, negatively affecting the website’s performance, its availability and the User Experience record.

Next, a comprehensive report is displayed. Your e-commerce business will be evaluated in five sectors, on a scale from 1 to 100. In addition, you will get knowledge of critical sections of your website that need optimization.

The first factor is the performance of the website. It applies to the speed at which your website downloads and displays. This is especially important for mobile users who tend to swiftly give up on slow pages.

Throughout the test, Lighthouse compares the performance of your site with other sites. 50 points in this area mean that your website is faster than 75% of other sites on the web. Importantly, the test takes into account elements such as image loading, JavaSript, and CSS. Thanks to this you will learn which ones need improvement to increase the speed of your online store.

This area examines 10 distinct factors like the use of https (encrypted version of the http protocol), API errors or avoidance of cache files. All of them are considered to be Best Practices, i.e. techniques generally recognized as the most effective in creating websites. The report will comprise of point indicators.

SEO is all that is relevant to the proper positioning of the website and its preparation for the Internet robots scanning test. Throughout the audit, the Lighthouse will concentrate on components such as metadata, hreflang (language versions of content) and font sizes.

Thanks to the detailed result you will learn how to make your website become higher in the ranking of search results, ie what optimization should be done.

Through that test, Lighthouse will review how your site and its tools work for users with disabilities. It will focus on aspects such as appropriate labels.

The Lighthouse is compatible with PWA. In practice, that means that it does as many as 11 tests regarding the main duties. They involve the offline operation, fast loading even when using a weak internet connection, accessibility of the https protocol or compatibility with various browsers. In the test, indicators regarding the use of the website in the mobile mode are taken into record.

By getting a positive result from the Lighthouse audit, you can be sure that the rate of return on investment will be high in a short period. Do not forget that you don’t have to be licensed to perform such a test. It is significant that the results reflect the performance of the site on all devices, both online and offline. Based on the report you will receive all the information you need regarding the proper optimization of your e-commerce business. Thanks to this you will know how to increase the conversion rate and, as a consequence, the profit generated by the store.