One of the most effective ways to assess an E-commerce store’s performance is to look at its conversion rate. Generally speaking, the higher the conversion rate of a company, the greater its performance. There are thousands of tactics to optimize the conversion rate. E-commerce PWA development, in recent years, has become one of the most common options besides building a website.

If you are in two minds between developing an E-commerce PWA and E-commerce website or are hesitant to integrate PWA into your store’s site, this blog is for you.

Here we’re going to mention some aspects that influence the conversion rate and more importantly, compare the ability to improve this between the PWA and website development. 

How To Define E-Commerce Conversion Rate?

The conversion rate is the proportion of total website visitors who convert. Google defines E-commerce conversion rate as the ratio of transactions to sessions, represented as a percentage.

An E-commerce conversion rate of 10%, for example, is one transaction for every ten sessions.

Factors Affecting The Conversion Rate

Understanding what elements influence the total conversion rate of your website aids in expanding your online reach and promoting purchasing. Accordingly, based on them, you can choose which option suits your store more: E-commerce PWA or E-commerce website. 

Below are several common factors that are considered to have significant impacts on the conversion rate of an online store.

1. Store Performance

The conversion rate is heavily influenced by the performance of the e-commerce store.

Load time

Fast page speed has regularly been found to result in a higher conversion rate. When users try to access a website that takes a long time to load, they tend to look for another source of products.

To put it another way, the faster a page loads, the more likely a user is to take the desired action on that page.

UX design

UX design is another important factor for a healthy conversion rate. A professional design customized to provide a great user experience, following a more enjoyable shopping experience for customers.

Advantageous functions

Regarding the conversion rate improvement, innovative and useful functions for an E-commerce site is an indispensable factor.

For example, live chat support, enhanced checkout, secure payment, and so on are must-have features that assist customers to shop online at ease and contribute to generating more purchases.

2. Responsiveness

With the rise of smartphones, tablets, and other mobile devices, it’s more crucial than ever to build a responsive and mobile-friendly website. This means that you’re probably risking conversions on mobile devices if your E-commerce site does not have mobile friendliness.

3. Security

Because of the amount of money spent on online sales transactions, fraudsters have repeatedly targeted online stores.

As a result, maintaining the security of your online business is critical to safeguard your store and your consumers. This will help to gain customer trust and increase your E-commerce conversions.

How E-Commerce PWA And E-Commerce Website Contribute To The Conversions

1. Similarities

UX design

These two solutions for E-commerce development share much in common and UX design is one of them. In a simple explanation, UX design is a concept referring to the process of creating products that are helpful, simple to use, and enjoyable to interact with. Regarding online shopping, customers can make decisions quickly because they don’t have to waste time looking for what they need with an uncluttered design.

Both PWA and the web site’s design can customize to be as aesthetic as possible with the purpose of making the store recognizable and grasping customers’ attention. This will open the door for future purchases.  

E-commerce functions

As PWAs and websites are both serving the purpose of selling products online, these supply customers with a wide range of essential E-commerce functions and satisfy buyers’ needs.

Regards e-commerce website development, the number of features mainly depends on your selected platform. Assume that your site was built on Magento. By default, it already has all necessary e-commerce features from product/ catalog management to marketing and promotions. To add more functions, you can consider using third-party extensions or developing custom ones.

In comparison, e-commerce PWA development can deliver similar features but in another way. One of the most popular ways to develop a PWA is to use ready-made PWA themes. Therefore, the e-commerce functions of the PWA will decide by the selected theme. You can also build custom ones on the PWA source code. However, if you want to add third-party modules into the PWA, it would not be as easy as what you can do with the normal website. Written APIs will be needed to connect the extensions with the PWA storefront.

Security

It is possible to apply various security methods inclusive of using HTTPS, choosing a secure web host, changing CMS settings, etc. to enhance the security of both website and PWA.

Additionally, we can integrate e-commerce websites and e-commerce PWAs with various payment gateways such as PayPal, Stripe, Amazon Pay, and so on, to keep the payments ecosystem rolling smoothly. They act as a go-between for stores and their customers, ensuring that the transaction completed safely and quickly.

HTTPS and payment gateways are to gain the trust of customers which is a major motivating force to streamline retention. In fact, according to a 2016 survey, 84% of consumers would cancel a transaction if the website is insecure. Needless to say, a lack of customer trust may cause a loss in revenue and conversions.

2. Differences

Page Load speed

As mentioned above, load time plays a decisive role in boosting the site conversion rate. In terms of page loading speed, Progressive Web Apps do have a great advantage over websites.

Backlinko’s study, which analyzed five million desktop and mobile pages, mentioned that on desktop, it takes 10.3 seconds to fully load a webpage, while mobile takes 27.3 seconds. Whereas, on average, the PWA of retailers only takes 3s for the first load and 1.3s for the next one. For example, Forbes’ PWA can be fully loaded in less than one second on mobiles. 

Moreover, nearly 50% of users expect a webpage’s load speed of 5 seconds or less. And it’s proven that the load speed is directly proportional to the conversion rate.

All things considered, in terms of speed, PWA completely wins in this battle and leads to a higher number of conversions as well.

Advantageous functions

Another strength of PWA compared to a website is its app-like functionalities that play a crucial role in enhancing the user experience. Below are the special features of PWA that you cannot find on any website:

• Add to the home screen (A2HS)

Once the PWA install, customers can access the store with just a click on a shortcut on the desktop/ mobile home screen.

• Push notifications

As a useful marketing method, push notifications to differentiate E-commerce PWA from traditional E-commerce websites. Working in a form of pop-up messages on customers’ devices, this function supports online stores in engaging more customers.

If they do not miss out on any promotions or coupons due to it, the store gains benefit in significantly increasing the number of conversions. Take Lancôme as a typical example, the business saw a 17% boost in conversions, a 53% rise in mobile visits on iOS, and an 8% boost in conversion rates on carts retrieved via push notifications.

• Background sync

This function allows synchronization to reduce the site’s dependence on the network connection. As a result, when disconnection occurs, customers’ previous actions will restore. They will continue to process once customers are able to reconnect to the internet.

They don’t need to do everything again like the way they have to with a website. It is a good way to retain customers by limiting possible irritations, leading to more conversions later on.

Dynamic Storefront

Progressive Web App is similar in responsiveness to a website and yet to some extent, it is more effective. The reason is that any PWA has a responsive/ separate design for mobiles while not all websites are built with a responsive design.

Many websites have a one-size-fits-all design for all gadgets. Consequently, they cannot perform well on smart devices due to popular issues such as unsuitable font size, bad CTA button, too large images, etc.

The fact that we are living in a technology-driven world where everyone owns at least a smart device emphasizes the importance of mobiles to E-commerce. Therefore, creating a mobile-first platform might be a smart strategy for any online store and PWA will ideally match this purpose. 

Comparison In Development Cost

E-commerce PWAs and E-commerce websites can be achieved at different price ranges and by various solutions such as the use of themes and bespoke development.

Notwithstanding, because of its complexity in architecture and various functions, E-commerce PWA development is more expensive.

Generally, a standard E-commerce website cost is from around $2,500 to 10,000. Meanwhile, a basic PWA can cost from $5,000 to $20,000.

Last Words

After taking mentioned information into consideration, you can realize that E-commerce PWA is way more powerful in conversion rate optimization compared to E-commerce websites. Despite its higher price, its high quality deserves your investment.

If you are a low-budget store owner, a conventional website would be a good start. However, PWA integration is still much needed in the long run. If your store is suffering from an unexpected conversion rate, fortunately, upgrading your store with PWA is all you need to do now.

It’s time to make a decision!

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