Nowadays, Magento Progressive Web App (PWA) has become one of the most surefire tools for merchants to achieve a high level of customer satisfaction. However, many store owners hesitate to convert their Magento website to PWA since they are afraid of the development cost. This post will provide insights on the investment for a Magento PWA integration project, with the aim of showing proof to the contrary. Let's figure it out!
The progressive web app is not a new thing with the geeks. As a result of combining the native app and the mobile web, PWA is born with powerful app-like features delivered through web browsers.
Magento and Google got together to bring the best of PWA features to the Magento, the most popular e-commerce platform today.
On Jan 15, 2019, Magento 2 PWA Studio was released to facilitate the process of integrating PWA in Magento 2 e-commerce websites.
Progressive Web App brings about plenty of benefits that all Magento stores desire. Here are some outstanding ones:
According to Think with Google, if it takes more than 3 seconds to load a page, 53% of users will leave the site. Thus, site speed is one of the most essential components for e-commerce businesses. In the meantime, PWA has a lightning site loading speed. This is the strongest point of PWA.
PWAs can work cross-platform smoothly. Those browsers such as Firefox, Chrome, Opera are supporting PWA. While on Safari there are some limitations for PWA. For example, Safari doesn't support PWA to show the pop-up to add the icon to the home screen, users have to manually add through the Share button. However, it's still a good thing for PWA to write one, work everywhere.
Also, PWA has a responsive design. Result in PWA enhance user experience across devices like mobile phones, tablets, and even desktops. This is not only to bring the user a better experience but also to help the site to rank better. The reason is due to the mobile-first algorithm of Google, the more responsive web design, the better ranking in Google search results.
Another function of PWA is the ability to work offline. This function allows the user to browse a page that they have visited before without an internet connection. Users can view the product, add to cart and even place the order offline. Everything will be processed when the internet is connected.
Inheriting the best things of the website, PWA is highly sharable and linkable. PWA has its URLs, and app-like interface at the same time. Moreover, Google announced that the mobile version of a site would be indexed first. This makes PWAs even more SEO-friendly.
Push notification is also an outstanding feature of PWA. In e-commerce businesses, keeping engagement with the customer is a crucial thing to do. On the one hand, the common mail service of Magento - Mailchimp costs approximately $0.05 per email. On the other hand, PWA cost zero to send push notifications about offers, the latest deals and order updates
Last but not least, PWA can be added to the home screen with an icon like a native app. The user can visit it like an app without downloading or accessing to any browser. This convenience point will help to increase the session duration of users and hence, raising the conversion rate.
Before evaluating whether it's pricey to build a Magento Progressive Web App or not, we should dig into the factors affecting this cost.
Although Magento 1 can turn into Progressive Web App, Magento 2 structure is more appropriate to PWA integration. To be more specific, we will have to do a lot of customization to the Magento 1 website to upgrade it to a PWA. Therefore, my recommendation is if your current site is based on Magento 1 version, you had better implement Magento 2 migration before integrating it with PWA.
Some agencies are now providing Magento 2 migration and PWA integration services at one time. It can help merchants to economize much more than doing these services separately.
In short, if your site is Magento 2 ready, you can cut the cost of Magento migration and vice versa.
The cost of hiring Magento PWA coders directly affects the cost of PWA development. Merchants should carefully consider the budget, then choosing the fittest service provider.
The hourly rates of the developers vary with their experience levels and locations. For example, a certified Magento developer in the US, UK will charge from $70-100 per working hour. Meanwhile, you can easily hire a Magento programmer with strong expertise in Vietnam, India, Thailand... with a fee of $20-50/hour.
Unfortunately, the number of extensions can affect the Magento PWA price since they cannot be easily installed in PWAs like conventional Magento websites.
To be more particular, if there is any change on Magento frontend made by Magento extensions, it requires associated customization on the PWA (for both storefront and API). Otherwise, those modules will become useless.
More extensions mean more money to be spent on the PWA integration process.
This support fee is the thing that merchants should ask the agency clearly before using any service. A large number of agencies don't provide free support. They will charge a support fee right after delivering the work. Whilst, other agencies provide pre and post-service support.
When you determine all of the elements above, you can start estimating the cost of your Magento PWA development project.
At first, when there are only several Magento Progressive Web App integration solution providers on the market, the cost of PWA development ballooned (up to $50,000-70,000).
At this moment, there are more agencies joining the game, dragging the price down to a much more reasonable amount (from $5,000-20,000).
For example, Tigren is offering a solution to integrate the Magento website with Progressive Web App by using its exclusive PWA theme (https://pwa-app.tigren.com/). They promise to deliver rich-feature Magento 2 PWA at the best price.
For medium-to-large Magento e-commerce stores, this investment is just a small amount of money. It's nothing compared to what they will get (blazing fast platform, enhanced customer satisfaction, higher SEO rankings, more organic traffic, greater sales and revenue.
On the contrary, for startups or small enterprises, PWA can be a big investment that needs thorough consideration. However, if the merchants have a vision and foresee all the amazing benefits that PWA brings about, they might be willing to pay for the Magento Progressive Web App.
Undeniably, developing a PWA is much faster than developing a native app as its independence from a specific operating system or platform. Also, PWAs don’t have to meet the requirements of Google and Apple to get to the app stores because it does not require an installation. Meanwhile, the native app downside is that it can only work in a single operating system. Thus, native apps have to be developed individually and take a longer time.
Commonly, it takes at least 6 months to a year to build a native app from scratch. As mentioned above, native apps have to be developed individually for different operating systems. While PWAs can work cross-platform and developed once, the time to build native apps will always be doubled because it has to be developed for at least 2 operating systems (iOS and Android).
In comparison, a PWA just takes up to 3 months to develop.
As you might know, the longer time to develop will definitely higher associated costs. The reason is that most of the Magento development companies will charge your projects based on their hourly rate.
As a result, the cost of Magento native app development is often two-three times that of PWA for Magento.
From my perspective, investing in Magento Progressive Web App is a smart choice. It can help Magento merchants to save money and time in comparison with developing a mobile native app. This also means that a PWA can help startups and small businesses to see a faster return on investment (ROI).
By revealing the price and analyzing the amazing benefits that PWA brings, I think that it worths every penny that we spend on.
