In terms of global eCommerce trends, mobile-ification is the most important frontier online businesses need to get a handle on. A 2019 survey report by Forrester Consulting pointed out that the flow of traffic from desktop to mobile has grown to 52% globally. Consumers are more proficient in the use of mobile phones, and their expectations are higher. Therefore merchants must focus on constantly updating and investing in new technologies, especially those that can generate long-term commercial value and leverage the platform's competitive advantages.
To meet these demands, Magento (currently Adobe Commerce) released Magento PWA Studio in January 2019, which is a set of tools for building online stores with full App-level experiences to help merchants increase mobile conversion rates. It also helps developers cope with the complexity of building different channels, and optimizing the user experiences across each of them. As one of Magento's partners based in China, we at TMO can give you a comprehensive introduction below.
- Headless eCommerce: Can It Help Your Business?Headless eCommerce has exploded since first emerging last year. Already it's helped cut costs and improve efficiency for countless businesses.Headless eCommerce: Can It Help Your Business?
- Using Progressive Web Apps and React to Build Your Mobile eCommerceUsing Progressive Web Apps and React to Build Your Mobile eCommerce
Overview
In short, the obvious highlights of PWA are:
- Faster and smoother browsing experiences
- "App"-level functionality without needing to download an App
- Push notifications
- Icon on the home screen
But there are several advantages of PWA beyond these:
- In addition to mobile devices, PWA is now widely used in desktop development to increase the speed of loading and give users a better experience.
- PWA can be used to build a cross-channel eCommerce site, such as connecting online and offline stores. This enables such features as customers scanning bar codes or QR codes, activating product search, and paying for online purchases in-store.
- Its lightweight structure is expected to replace the traditional POS system and retail assistant platform. It will provide in-store staff with a fast, efficient and cost-effective way to locate products both online and in-store. Also, it provides self-checkout, returns and sales promotion features all from the employees' own smartphones.
A few years ago, retailers started to implement PWA projects. The official release of Magento PWA studio also greatly promoted this trend. Headless eCommerce and PWA applications are becoming increasingly common, and many large-scale websites are hopping on the trend of PWA-based reconstruction. At the end of this article, we collected some case studies for your reference.
Using Magento PWA Studio to Build eCommerce Platforms
The Magento PWA Studio is a set of developer tools that allows the development, deployment and maintenance of PWA storefronts on Magento 2. Magento PWA Studio enables building an independent brand web-store quickly and easily. You can easily configure your platform to your brand's style and conduct large-scale promotion activities. The latter in particular is a major advantage of headless eCommerce. Compared with App-based eCommerce malls and traditional mobile web pages, it also has many benefits. However, the complexity of different companies' requirements for capabilities and customization can vary. Therefore we strongly recommend that you find professional developers for secondary development.
Magento PWA Studio includes the following tools:
- PWA-buildpack CLI tool: The main tool for building an eCommerce platform using Mangento PWA.
- Peregrine component: Contains components and hooks connected to REACT.
- Venia mall visual components: The Venia component package includes a conceptual store built using Magento PWA Studio, and some visual components.
- UPWARD: Reqirements for building the PWA mall.
- pwastudio.io: Guidance document for developers to create Magento PWA storefront
- Magento Cloud Server: Developers can access Magento applications in the cloud to quickly build an eCommerce platform. The server includes the maintained Sample DATA and is open to all PWA Studio personnel.
*TMOGroup is an official partner of Magento and can access the Magento cloud server.
Magento PWA Studio Case Studies
On Magento PWA Studio's official website, we can see that some pioneers have already used it to build their own eCommerce websites. It’s obvious that their performance on the mobile side is almost the same as that of an App (even loading faster than most Apps), with everything you would expect, such as opening animations and data storage. Compared with before, the data usage of these websites after the PWA upgrade has also improved significantly.
Xercise4Less (Sports & Fitness Industry)
PWA technology drove the construction of Xercise4Less's eCommerce website, for example. After optimizing Page Builder, the number of views per login by consumers has increased from 4 to 7 pages, which has greatly boosted consumer stickiness.
Selco (Architecture and Decoration Industry)
The construction of Selco's PWA eCommerce platform was completed in January 2020. After launch, the platform's transaction volume increased by 94%, which boosted transaction revenue by 82%. The current version of the PWA eCommerce platform is up to 300% faster than before.
Eleganza (Architecture and Decoration Industry)
After its PWA eCommerce platform was launched, Eleganza found that the corresponding speed of its server has increased five-fold compared with the company's previous platform. The number of consumer views per instance also increased by 50%, while average browsing time increased by 19%.
ROECKL (Fashion Industry)
PWA has brought ROECKL's eCommerce platform significant improvements. After using PWA to build an eCommerce platform, its order volume has increased by 198% (mobile terminal orders increased by 172%), and the total number of users increased by 150% (mobile terminal users increased by 175%).
UK Meds (Health Industry)
After using PWA to upgrade its platform, UK Meds saw its response time increase by 300% compared to its previous eCommerce platform. It also experienced a 30% increase in order volume.
Other Cases Using Magento PWA
Particularly for those interested in the fashion and lifestyle industries, it may be worth checking the following. These are examples of platforms where PWA has empowered an unprecedented smooth user experience in the following cases:
If you are interested in upgrading your eCommerce website to a next-generation PWA website or want to build an independent official eCommerce website, please click here to contact us. As an official partner of Magento, we have developed several high-quality PWA eCommerce platforms, and we are committed to improving your sales through sophisticated design and rapid-response technology.
