A progressive web app is an app your customers install straight from a link. It sits on their home screen with its own icon, sends notifications, works when the signal drops, and never goes near an app store. For most small businesses it does everything a native app would, without the cost or the review process.
Most small businesses do not need an app store listing. They need a link they can text to someone.
What a progressive web app is
A progressive web app, usually shortened to PWA, is a website built to behave like an installed app. Add it to a phone’s home screen and it opens full screen with its own icon, keeps people signed in, works offline from cached content, and can send push notifications. There’s no download from Apple’s App Store or Google Play.
That last point matters more than it sounds. A native app means two separate builds, two review processes, an annual developer fee, and a customer who has to find you in a store and choose to download you. A PWA is a link you can text to someone.
Who it’s for
This suits businesses with customers who come back. Not one-off buyers, but the people who deal with you season after season and need telling things. In practice:
- membership sites, parks, clubs and communities with recurring customers
- businesses that currently send important information through a Facebook page
- anyone posting paper statements or invoices to the same people every year
- services where customers need to check something quickly and repeatedly
If your customers interact with you once and never return, an app is the wrong spend. Say so to anyone who tells you otherwise.
The problems it usually solves
Information reaches people by the wrong route. Plenty of small businesses run their communications through a Facebook page. A post reaches whoever happens to scroll past it. A notification reaches everyone.
The same question arrives every day. Opening times, prices, what’s in stock, when the works finish. If your team answers it by phone, it belongs in an app.
Paper costs more than people think. When I scoped an app for Barlows Caravan Park, the invoice run came to roughly 1,500 to 2,000 posted items a year across about 500 households. At a pound and a half to two pounds each once you count paper, ink, envelopes, postage and the time spent stuffing them, that’s between £2,250 and £4,000 a year, every year. It was the clearest hard saving in the whole document.
Things scroll away. A dated post is the wrong format for information that stays true for a fortnight. Standing content needs to stay put.
What’s included
- A scoping document that says honestly whether an app is worth building, who would use it, and what each feature is for
- A working prototype you can click through on your own phone before anything is built properly
- The build, offline first, with the home screen install, notifications and any accounts or sign-in
- Content and data setup, including any connection to systems you already use such as accounting software
- Install instructions written for your customers, because adding to a home screen isn’t obvious to everyone
- Handover, so you can update content yourself without coming back to me
What you get
- An installable app your customers add from a link you can text, email or print on a sign
- Push notifications that reach every installed phone
- Offline access so cached content stays readable when the signal doesn’t
- A simple way to update it without needing a developer for routine changes
The feature test
Every feature has to remove a phone call, save you a job, or give someone a reason to open the app more than once a year. Anything that fails all three stays out. That test is the most useful thing I can give a client, because the temptation on every app project is to add things nobody will use.
A worked example
For Barlows Caravan Park, the park’s own behaviour set the design. Storm warnings were already going out on Facebook, with guests notifying each other about awning damage. That wasn’t a guess about what people might use, it was a behaviour that already existed running on the worst possible tool for it.
Two findings changed the build. Groundworks on the park are constant rather than occasional, so a standing Works on the Park block sits above the notices and stays until the work finishes, instead of a dated post that scrolls away. And the closed season, roughly eight weeks when 300 owners are away and can’t check their own caravans in the windiest part of the year, turned out to be an argument for the app rather than against it. A message saying the park has been walked after last night’s gale is worth more to an absent owner than anything the app does in August.
The technical risk was the site’s poor wifi. It closed when it turned out mobile coverage is good across the park on every network, so notifications will land. The app is still built offline first so cached content stays readable.
Limitations
Push notifications on iPhone only work once the app has been added to the home screen, so the install step matters and needs explaining properly to customers. Some hardware features available to native apps aren’t available to a PWA, though for the kind of app most small businesses need, that rarely comes up.
What this won’t solve
An app won’t create a reason for people to come back if there isn’t one. If your customers genuinely deal with you once, no notification will change that. It also won’t fix a business whose information is wrong or out of date, it will just distribute the wrong information faster.
Talk to the person doing the work
There is no account manager here and no team to be handed to. If you get in touch, it is me who reads it, me who looks at your site, and me who does the work if we go ahead.
Get in touch, or start with a free assessment.
Engagement and price
There are no list prices here, and that is deliberate. What a piece of work costs depends on the state of the site, how much of it there is and what you actually need, none of which I know before looking at it.
So it starts with a free analysis. I look at your site, your Search Console and who you are really competing with, then come back with what I would do first and what it would cost to do. No obligation attached, and if the honest answer is that you do not need me yet, I will say so.
How the work gets done
Prototypes are built and tested before the full build starts. Anything customer-facing on the web gets checked through the technical SEO checks so it’s indexable where it should be. This service sits under app and tool development, and the Barlows community app case study covers a full scoping and build. For wider site work, see web development.
FAQ
What is a progressive web app?
A progressive web app is a website built to behave like an installed app. Customers add it to their phone’s home screen from a link, where it opens full screen with its own icon, works offline from cached content, and can send push notifications without any app store involvement.
Do progressive web apps work on iPhone?
Yes. An iPhone user adds the app through Safari’s Share menu using Add to Home Screen, and from then on it opens like any other app and stays signed in. Push notifications work once it has been installed to the home screen, so the install step needs clear instructions.
Is a progressive web app less expensive than a native app?
Usually, because there’s one build rather than separate iOS and Android versions, no app store review process and no annual developer fee. The saving varies with what the app does. For most small business apps, the functionality gap between the two approaches is small enough not to matter.
Can I update the content myself?
Yes, and I’d build it that way by default. Routine content such as notices, prices, opening times and stock updates should be editable by you without a developer. Anything structural, such as a new feature or a change to how accounts work, would come back to me.
Talk it through
Get in touch and tell me who your repeat customers are and what they keep having to ask you. That conversation usually settles whether an app is worth it.