e-Commerce

Web, App, or PWA? Key Factors for deciding the right way to kickstart your e-commerce store.

Written by Tarun
Posted on - 5 min read

Every Business today wants a successful eCommerce website for it. But what many business owners are not aware of is the fact that there are multiple ways of achieving this. The three most common approach is a Website, App, or a Progressive Web App (PWA).

Website

Accenture website

A website allows individuals to buy and sell real things, services, and digital products through the internet instead of a typical street-side business. A business can handle orders, receive payments, manage shipping and logistics, and provide customer care through an e-commerce website.

App

Accenture app

It’s no secret that mobile consumption has taken over our lives, with everyone having these devices glued to their hands nearly 24/7. As a business owner, you must recognize this and adapt. As a result, brands are evolving their businesses by launching their brand app, which opens a massive gate for customers who previously couldn’t reach through the website.

PWA

Progressive web app

A Progressive Web App (PWA) is a web application that delivers a native app-like experience to consumers by utilizing the newest web capabilities. It is the technology that will unify online and native apps and allow them to be replaced by a single instance.

Which one of the three is best for your business?

Each technology serves a diverse set of business requirements and wants.

For example, if you have an eCommerce site and want to gain or re-engage clients but are unsure of the results, the PWA is an excellent choice. Choosing the PWA for a developing country’s rising media, market, or business is also the greatest option.

At the same time, if you have a highly complicated product to deploy, such as banking apps, social media platforms, or dating platforms, you should construct a native mobile app or a website.

Key Factors to decide which is best for your Business

Based on scalability

If you want to reach a larger audience and your target audience is divided into numerous groups, you can’t just focus on one platform and create a native app for iOS or Android or a website for everyone. To reach out to your clients and provide them with a better experience, you’ll need to develop and construct apps and websites for both platforms independently. This method, however, is time-consuming and requires additional resources.

On the other side, progressive web apps are designed to act responsively and they make it faster and easier to be able to reach out to target users, irrespective of the platform they use.

What approach is taken among the competitors?

Observing which approach your competitors use can help you understand which one would be the best for you as they would’ve already done the research, saving you the time, and you also can improve by improvising your competitor’s approach filling the gaps that they might have left.

Technology you have

With technology, it means at what level does your current tech work? is it the latest? which one out of the three does your current tech support better? And then decide which amongst the three suits better for your business.

Pros of Website

  1. Easy to build

Building and maintaining a website is easier than ever before with an online website builder, you can have a proficient and speedy network set up in hours. You don’t need to rely on anyone to update it for you, you can use their expert database at any time to keep your site intact.

  1. Cuts costs

Having an online business can cut the cost of staff, shop rent, tax, and utility bills. You can liaise directly with the consumer and arrange the delivery for a fraction of the price. 

  1. Improve customer service

It’s a known fact that having a web presence will help you improve your customer service. If you’re a store owner and have staff members, you can’t oversee them 24/7 to observe how they are interacting with clients. However, in the online world, nothing stays a secret as you can monitor your staff’s work and ensure your customers are receiving a speedy and helpful reply

Cons of having a website

  1. Not reaching the targeted audience

With the growth of the internet and other competitors, sometimes it gets difficult to get the right audience for your business. It also makes it difficult for your business to grow online.

  1.  Bad publicity

A website can build or destroy your reputation. If customers are unsatisfied with your products, they will give a negative review of the business and this can have an impact on your reputation.

  1.  Accessibility

Everyone is accessing the website through their mobile phones and only 40% of websites are customized for viewers using their mobile devices limiting the accessibility of the information

Pros of Having an App

  1. A high percentage of the population uses smartphones and having an app for your brand drives more potential customers toward the brand 

2. The app keeps your brand prominent in the marketplace, keeping you ahead of the competition

3. Apps load faster than the mobile sites

Cons of having an App

  1. A mobile App needs to be made to suit each platform, Android, Windows, iPhone, etc. which can be costly and timely.

2. Apps are not as simple to optimize as a mobile website.

3. Apps can be expensive as the more functionality they have, the more they cost and can be hard to update.

Pros of having PWA for your business

  1. Engaging

The application should be comfortable, pleasant, and intuitive to use, so the end-users wanted to visit it more often. Such websites use push notifications, keep in touch with the user, and provide them with data.

  1. Fast performance

PWA boots up and works faster, even with a poor internet connection. So you do not need to refresh the page every time.

  1. Cross-platform 

Cross-platform apps are more valuable now. And here, PWA has a huge benefit as it fits both iOS and Android OS.

Cons of having PWA

  1. IOS has limited features as compared to android

Only Android users can get push notifications while iOS users are deprived of such an opportunity. It is also worth mentioning that Safari, one of the most popular browsers for iOS, does not support PWA at all.

  1. Limited functionality

It also doesn’t have access to the user’s contacts, calendar, and alarms among other things, which limits its functionality.

  1. Unawareness amongst the users

Moreover, some users may not be familiar with the idea of PWA installation. Hence they tend to ignore push notifications.

Conclusion: 

Now that you have a clear understanding of all three, you will be able to choose what fits right for meeting the eCommerce solutions of your business. However, once things take off you will eventually be needing all three platforms to make the complete omnichannel.

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