2019 Web Development Trends to Follow: AMP, PWA, and Ionic

2019 web development trends show us the direction in which an entire industry is headed. You can avoid trends, be conservative, and bank on the genuine quality of your product and service. However, those who evolve and adapt have more chances to win the market.

Web development is aimed at solving real-world business problems here and now. The Washington Post was the first brand to follow web development trends and combine Accelerated Mobile Pages with Progressive Web Apps. This resulted in a 23% growth in user retention and dramatic UX improvements. AliExpress, Wired, and Gizmodo were among the trailblazers as well. They made it clear that emerging mobile web technologies are agile enough to benefit every business.

#1. Use Accelerated Mobile Pages

What is a successful website? One with a good UX and a well-thought-out a monetization strategy. Response speed, in turn, defines the quality of UX. The faster, the better, it’s that simple. According to Kissmetrics statistics, 40% of users leave after 3 seconds of waiting for a website to load. Mobile audiences are growing exponentially but not everyone has a state-of-art device and fast internet access. This means a huge traffic loss for websites. The mobile world is craving fast web access.

After the release of proprietary Apple News and Facebook Instant Articles, Google rattled the tech world with its open source Accelerated Mobile Pages.

What is Accelerated Mobile Page, really?

AMP or Accelerated Mobile Page is an HTML page designed to be lightweight and load amazingly fast. How is it possible? It just doesn’t allow the use of certain HTML tags, some CSS and almost all custom JavaScript. In fact, the code behind an AMP page is 80-90% shorter than your standard web page code. Instead, it provides AMP HTML, AMP JS, and AMP Cache to ensure fast rendering and reliable performance.

Why adopt Accelerated Mobile Pages?

• To provide a lightspeed mobile experience to your web audience

AMPs are more mobile-friendly than you can imagine. Designed specially to load quickly on mobile, AMPs load almost instantly regardless of device type or connection speed.

• To rank higher than ordinary website pages with an adaptive layout and make it into the Google news carousel

It’s crucial to understand that an AMP itself doesn’t have any additional ranking boost. Google ranks mobile-friendly resources higher and AMP pages are mobile-friendly meaning they are ranked the same way. What’s also important is that not just media resources are now allowed in the news carousel, but every trusted brand that has made use of AMP technology.

• To advertise efficiently

The main idea behind advertising benefits is also speed. Users instantly find what they are looking for thanks to instant loading speeds. As a result, they are more likely to be engaged with branded messages and make purchases. AMP ads allow you to advertise both on AMP and non-AMP pages. Ads and AMPs can be created once and distributed multiple times across various platforms and websites.

Any success stories?

The Washington Post was the first brand to support Accelerated Mobile Pages. The experiment resulted in 88% load speed reduction and 23% user retention growth. Now nearly 1000 AMP HTML articles are published by The Washington Post across the web daily.

#2. Utilize PWA

What if your website acted like an app? What if every user could install it on every type of device using every browser? This is not a dream but an absolutely real technology designed by Google to benefit both users and businesses.

What is PWA

Imagine a website that looks like an app and acts like an app. Users can instantly install Progressive Web Apps using Chrome, Opera, Firefox and Microsoft Edge. All components are cached during the first visit. PWA is much easier and faster to develop than a website, not to mention native mobile apps. Above all, even if not installed by a user, a PWA lets you send push notifications and work in offline mode. This is crucial in situations when an internet connection is flaky, for example like it usually is in airports. That’s what Progressive Web Apps look like.

3 main reasons to adopt PWA

• Home Screen Icon

Like a native app, a PWA can add an icon to the home screen of users devices. It’s a huge step towards ongoing interactions and quick access to a branded app-like experience.

• Push Notifications

Push notifications are a well-known tool designed to boost user engagement, increase customer retention and boost ROI. By providing an efficient notification channel, Progressive Web Apps stand out as an irreplaceable tool for marketers.

• Installation via a link

Not only are Progressive Web Apps is discoverable by search engines, but they can also be installed with a single URL click. This makes it easier to distribute a branded app. There is no more a necessity to compete with 2 million apps available across the App Store and Google Play. A direct link to install your app can now be discovered by users in social networks, websites or even an organic search.

Any Success Stories?

Actually, Google has a bunch of success stories from leading companies. For example, AliExpress increased conversion rates for new users across all browsers by 104% and by 82% in iOS. The web sessions time increased by 74% and users started to visit two times more pages per session.

You can also combine AMP and PWA to streamline your business. That’s what The Washington Post managed to achieve by combining these two techs.

#3. Make the most out of web reach and mobile engagement

The web is known for having a huge audience reach, while the mobile platform is great in engaging and retaining customers. The challenge for every business is to not thoughtlessly use all available resources chasing an audience but to accurately spread brand awareness. In such cases, a modern web stack comes to the rescue.

What do we mean by a modern web stack and how it can help

The web ecosystem nowadays consists of many awesome tools: React, Angular, Vue just to name a few. All these tools allow you to build web and mobile web solutions for business purposes. Alongside other handy tools, a modern web stack includes the Ionic framework. Ionic allows brands to streamline their brand’s voice across users’ mobile devices.

Why Ionic?

Ionic holds the top spot in our personal rating thanks to the impressive cost/performance ratio. By having web development skills you are all set to build a branded mobile app on Ionic using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Or, you can work with professionals to build a stellar cross-platform app without spending time and money on native development.

As we’ve stated in previous articles, hybrid development can be a perfect fit for your business in terms of cost-efficiency. We at Azoft have a lot of experience in cross-platform development.

Being forewarned, forearmed

This year and beyond, 20% of brands are predicted to abandon their native apps in favor of more agile and adaptive PWA apps. Believe it or not, but mobile users are already spending 80% of their online time refreshing their Facebook feed, watching Youtube videos, and searching in Google. This situation doesn’t seem to be changing anytime soon as there are too many apps released and it’s really hard to compete on a mobile market.

However, native apps will continue being a part of our lives and bring huge revenues to those who succeeded in turning their brilliant ideas into outstanding mobile products.

Stay sharp and adopt emerging technologies, at least those having a proven track record in making businesses happy. We are always here to serve the digital transformation needs of your business.