Progressive Web Apps on iOS

In 2024, 80% of user screen time will be dedicated to Apps. Delivering a consistent and functional experience is essential to any customer-facing business. There are two main ways to provide an App on iOS: a native app or a Progressive Web App.
Progressive Web Apps are a platform to deliver your services to customers via mobile devices. Still, without the significant time and cost of developing a “native app,” that is, a traditional one available through the Apple Store.
PWAs are more cost-effective, more efficient to maintain, and offer greater customer accessibility. They have limitations in terms of integration and complex functionality. Below are the high-level strengths and weaknesses, followed by an FAQ for further reference.

Strengths of using Progressive Web Apps for IOS

They enable greater customer penetration due to ease of access.
They remove significant app store fees and commissions, which throttle revenue.
They offer near parity with native apps but with some exceptions (see below).
They are significantly easier to develop, with a profound cost and resource burden reduction.

Weakness of using Progressive Web Apps for IOS

They have deficiencies versus native apps, which can impact your desired functionality (e.g. push notifications, biometrics, and geolocation are challenging to integrate).
They are battery-intensive for customer devices, which can be a deterrent.
Apple’s walled garden policy means integrating Progressive Web Apps on IOS can be challenging.

The benefits of developing a Progressive Web App versus a Native App can be significant, not just from a cost-saving perspective. However, Progressive Web Apps are less powerful than native apps. To ensure the right development route, it’s essential to understand what you need your app to do through a defined project methodology.
To assist with this process, we answer the business-critical questions below, defining each’s strengths and limitations so you can choose the best deployment for your purpose and profitability.

What are Progressive Web Apps?

Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) are a form of mobile application that sits in between a traditional website and a native mobile app. Broadly, the differences in using PWAs can be split into those critical for the developer and those essential for the customer:

Benefits for Developers Using IOS

They enable background data synching and make your app discoverable on search engines, significantly boosting SEO performance.
They sit outside the App Store’s lengthy review process, limiting your ability to respond to security issues or market changes.
They are not subject to the same fees as native apps available through the App Store.
They are agnostic to operating systems, meaning you can deliver a consistent experience across all devices.
They are easier to update and maintain as you can deploy updates in real-time.

Benefits for Customers Using IOS

Customers enjoy an immersive and consistent brand experience
The apps do not need to be installed and have a very low load time.
They use less data as they do not need to be downloaded onto customer devices.
They operate with rapid native-app-like interactions, meaning the customer experience is nearly identical.

What makes PWAs Unique on IOS devices?

IOS users can download PWAs directly from Safari onto their home screen. This means that, despite not being a native app, users can access and interact with your app as if it were native.
Being an integrated part of the device’s ecosystem (theoretically on the same home page as Calls or Settings), PWAs provide a seamless experience for your iOS users who access your application.
Under the bonnet, IOS devices use Service Worker Support. Apple recently delivered a raft of improvements, meaning PWAs can now integrate with things like push notifications. They can sync data in the background and also provide exceptional offline capabilities. We anticipate greater alignment as Apple develops more PWA support options.

What updates have Apple released for PWAs in their recent IOS update?

While still limited when compared to Android counterparts, the recent IOS updates (from IOS 16.4) have enabled the following:

Push Notifications
Heightened Security
Camera Access
Motion Sensor Access

It’s important to note that there are strict rules around this access; however, there has been a significant improvement in previous IOS versions. It demonstrates that Apple is embracing a PWA ecosystem, which means it will become essential to adopt to ensure continued customer engagement and revenue versus competitors.

How to Develop a Progressive Web App for IOS

A strong project methodology and clear milestones are essential to creating your app. The average development time for a PWA is 9 – 15 weeks, but this is variable depending on the scope of the project. There are many ways to develop a PWA.
At Fahrenheit Marketing, we follow a tried-and-tested methodology outlined below to give you an idea of what to expect. This is our standard methodology, which we can advise on.

Step 1: Discovery (1 - 2 weeks)

The initial meetings will help you determine what exactly you want to achieve with your PWA. They will also clearly differentiate between a Native App and a PWA to ensure the correct deployment of your website to an intuitive, integrated app. Fahrenheit employs a “measure twice, cut once” philosophy. This ensures quality and value from your investment. This phase agrees on the scope and scale of the project so that you can effectively plan resources.

Step 2: Design (2 - 3 weeks)

Next, we help design user interfaces. This stage captures the desired experience and feel of your brand. We work with you to ensure that the features you want to include are consistent across platforms and work with the IOS infrastructure. We can also leverage our decade of expertise and offer best-practice advice to maximize your investment.

Step 3: Development (4 - 8 weeks)

This is the bulk of the project, involving creating the environment (based on your requirements) and implementing core features (based on the agreed-upon scope).
Generally, the Development Phase will be divided into the following. These will often be developed concurrently:

Initial Setup and Framework Selection.
Service Worker Implementation
Manifest File Creation and Home Screen Integration
Core Features Development
Responsive Design and UI Implementation
Testing and Quality Assurance
Performance Optimization
Security and Accessibility Review
Beta Launch and User Feedback
Final Deployment

Step 4: Optimization (2 - 3 weeks)

Once the application has been developed within the scope, the next stage is ensuring that the site works quickly and effectively. We will run through standardized checks to ensure the user experience is optimized. Outside the app, we will also run SEO checks to ensure that the app is discoverable.

Step 5: Deployment and Maintenance (1 - 2 weeks)

Once the app is ready, we will deploy it to a secure server ready to use. This includes security analysis to ensure that all your site data is secure. Once live, we monitor and analyze. This provides essential information for improvements and updates moving forward.

Optimizing Performance for PWAs on iOS

Ongoing optimization is essential and provides benefits for your customers and your business. Below, we highlight key areas of focus and suggest strategies to address each:

Responsiveness and Speed

Slow load times and unresponsive pages will frustrate customers. This will reduce engagement and increase churn.
Increase speed with efficient caching, compression, and code minification. Ensure that your design is both responsive and adaptive.

Accessibility and User Experience

A lack of efficient user experience or cross-platform capability will decrease repeat visits, eroding conversions and revenue.
Include flexible images, scripts, and styles to maximize cross-platform compatibility. It’s also good to provide options for users of older software.

Offline Capability

If a user cannot access your app offline, this will impact engagement and conversion while increasing churn in areas with low internet access.
To ensure offline services, you can use methods like pre-caching essential assets or caching dynamically.

Security and Permissions Management

While customers’ trust is important, avoiding data breaches is business critical. This is due to the increasing severity of fines and legal action for data breaches. A serious cyber-attack through a bad app can cripple a business.
An optimized, strict content security policy, using secure encryption or multi-factor authentication can massively reduce the risk of cyber attack and increase customer trust.

These are key areas because they are the most likely to change as you grow. As you scale, each of these topics will require continual optimization. Customers will face a slow, inconsistent environment with growing security risks without it. This will decrease customer loyalty, engagement, and conversions while increasing churn—to an even greater extent than staying on a website only.

Not taking app optimization seriously risks the future of businesses through customer attrition and lost revenue.

The Future of PWAs on iOS: Trends and Opportunities

While Apple may have been slower in accepting PWAs, the tide has now turned. As a result, PWAs are set to have a dramatic impact on forward-facing businesses.

Firstly, the existing technology will be more deep, further reducing the complexity and cost of developing PWAs. There will also be greater integration with mobile functionality so that companies can use advanced camera controls, NFS Tags, and Bluetooth. Each new integrated element provides an opportunity for greater engagement and better analytics.

Looking further forward, there will be opportunities to enrich the user experience to an ever greater extent. Integration with PWAs and Virtual/Augmented reality will be game-changing, while refinements to the coding of PWAs will mean a single code base can service all platforms, including those with limited internet or older technology.

But to take advantage of these elements, you will need a strong foundation. This means an optimized, powerful, well-developed PWA that can scale with your business and stay relevant as the wider technology improves.

This can be daunting to do yourself. A partnership with a specialist like Fahrenheit Marketing can port your existing website to an intuitive, accessible, high-performance application in weeks.

Your entire customer base can carry your company around in their pocket, available whenever they need you.

Your clients can browse and buy through a clean interface, whether in the office or on the beach—whenever or wherever the idea strikes them.

The best thing is that your app can be developed and maintained by experts without the need to recruit and pay for headcount, leaving you free to focus on what your business does best—providing exceptional service for your customers.