Best PWA Platform: Magento PWA Studio vs Vue Storefront

“ In the year 2018, mobile commerce sales in the US accounted for 39.6% of total retail eCommerce sales—reaching $208.1 billion.”      -Emarketer

The source also confirms that the bar is expected to cross the $270 billion mark by the end of 2019. The stats are a clear proof that mobile phone has started to dominate the E-commerce and with the ease they provide at making orders and keeping a track of them, they can only become more popular in the coming years.

Considering the known options for developing mobile-supportive websites, PWA has evolved as one of the most popular ways in recent times. The technology brings up the best of the two worlds-websites and native apps to render customers with excellent services.

In recent times, Magento released its in-house PWA project- Magento PWA Studio to add the PWA Platform for Magento store with ease. The tool allows the Magento developers to make the stores mobile compatible in a short time, effectively.

In this blog, we will discuss the scope of Magento PWA Studio and the next most popular PWA platform for Magento store-Vue Storefront, and their stand in the m-commerce arena. 

Magento PWA Studio

Magento was quick to identify the huge potential mobile phones hold in the e-commerce niche and the downside of excluding it during the Magento store development.

2019 has been a great year for Magento store owners. Ever since Magento 2.3 has come up with PWA Studio, the store owners have experienced a great expansion in their reach for mobile users with considerable margins. This goes without saying that it has multiplied their page visits by manifolds, while it has also enhanced their conversion rates by a good number.

The PWA Studio allows the Magento Stores to be accessed on mobile screens efficiently while it has also enhanced the website performance on the desktop screens. The Magento storefronts are more arrayed and quicker to respond than ever before, contributing to the website response on a high note.

Here we present an example of a well-established firm that made the best benefits of the PWA technology by hiring Magento PWA developers.

A B2B brand saw a 29.6% rise in buying users 

Among thousands of success stories of Magento, is the Baker Distribution Company, which saw around 30% rise in their buying users every year, ever since they have come up with their Magento PWA Studio based store.

The company is a famous 70+ years old distributor of HVAC products who recently realized that they can firm their B2B market hold with the evergrowing m-commerce. Magento PWA Studio did the miracle for them by escalating their sales in a short time.

The exact numbers are:

• 28.6% rise in order volume year-over-year;
• 29.6% rise in buying users;
• 48.4% rise in page response speed.

But what makes Magento PWA Studio that efficient?

Magento PWA Studio offers a feature-rich PWA platform for Magento stores where the user is offered the easiest means to access the stores even on the mobile screens. Moreover, the PWA tool also enhances the website performance on the desktop screen enabling the pages to load and respond faster. Following are the major features that the Magento PWA Studio offers to its users:

Home screen option:
The Magento store can be virtually downloaded on the mobile screen, the very way Native apps are. While browsing the website with your mobile, the Magento Progressive Web App pushes notifications for adding the pseudo-native app to the home-screen the very way native apps do. The users can thus use the web-app from a single touch.

Works in offline mode:
The best part about Web apps under Magento PWA Studio is their ability to function even in the absence of a network. Unlike the websites, the web app on mobile phones keeps serving the users even when there is no internet connectivity.
As a result, the web apps can load the pages faster and render the functionalities when the device lacks ample internet connection.

A robust in-house back-end:
What more can we say about that when the front-end of the app clearly understands the back-end of the store? Magento Progressive Web App helps to maintain a good rapport with the Magento Store saving the user from frequent glitches.

Is Magento PWA Studio a 100% reliable PWA solution?

With those features discussed above, the Magento PWA Studio seems like a flawless solution for developing a PWA on Magento store, though it still lacks a few features:

No offline mode for iOS devices
The Progressive Web Apps by the Magento PWA Studio don’t seem much compatible with the iOS devices, especially during a lack of connectivity. The apps don’t work much as in the offline mode. The Android devices are served quite well.

It still is under development
The Magento PWA Studio is still a newbie and most of its features are still under process. It needs more time to be called as a fully accomplished project.

Restricted for Magento Back-end
The PWA Studio project by Magento is confined to Magento stores only. That is, only the e-commerce stores with a Magento back-end can make use of it. 

Do we have other options to build a PWA storefront for our Magento store? Can we overcome these demerits for good? Is it feasible, to go for the available options?

Vue Storefront for PWA

JavaScript frameworks have been appreciated, for the flexibility and the ease they provide at developing the front-end of the website, for a long time now. The likes of React and Angular have single-handedly carried out the entire operation allowing the user to add business-specific unique features and functionalities. 

Personalization plays a key role in presenting businesses, especially in e-commerce. Known especially for adding infinite customizations and the actions in the themes, the JavaScript Frameworks turn as the favorite front-end development tool for any e-commerce developer.

VueJS outstands among the rest of the JS frameworks for the codes are comparatively easier to understand and develop. Additionally, there are more advantages this framework adds to any storefront:

Smaller in size:
The small size of the Javascript framework defines its success. VueJS as a framework is light to download and barely occupies around 20KB space. On the contrary, the likes of Angular.js and React.js are bulkier. We see reasons why VueJS surpasses ReactJS in terms of popularity in GitHub making it the most popular framework for front-end development.

Component-based Approach
Vue.js works on the component-based approach with virtual rendering ability, single way data flow for component hierarchy and rendering high performance. It was primarily designed to address the drawbacks of the then-popular frameworks AngularJS and ReactJS.

Multi-platform support
Being the advanced version of the highly popular framework, Angular, VueJS has the support for multiple platforms in its DNA. The framework allows to develop complex applications using JSX, ES6, routing and bundling with much ease. The feature provides you with an omnichannel presence for your website.

The benefit of Vue Storefront for e-Commerce sites

As for e-commerce PWA, Vue Storefront adds a huge advantage over Magento PWA Studio. The VueJS based front-end creates a universal demo front that can be readily added to any e-commerce back-end. The separately designed demo store can be well synchronized with the back-end with simpler API calls. As a result, the custom front-end can be re-used by the development team multiple times with zero hassle.

On a practical note, the robust front-end framework brings out a lot more than just an interaction channel.

Case study on a Vue Storefront Magento

PlasmaVise is a Dutch brand that deals with TV in their region. The Magento based e-store sought help for something extraordinary to boost their branding, sales and customer activity. 

The team developed a VueJS based demo store under just 50 hours. The demo store uses imported products from the Magento 2 based backend and a Progressive Web App frontend setup with the Vue Storefront application.

Source:https://www.plasmavisie.nl/

That pretty much represents the ultra-fast website empowered by VueJS. But does that make it the right replacement for Magento PWA Studio? 

Advantages of Vue Storefront over Magento PWA Studio

We have previously explained the drawbacks of the PWA Studio. Let us have a brief check if Vue is worth a try:

Fulfilling in every aspect
While Magento 2 PWA  Studio still struggles with its features to be called a full-fledged project, Vue Storefront is a derivative of the long-known JavaScript frameworks like Angular and React. The features and its usage is well known to the developers involved.

Works universally for all the stores
Unlike Magento PWA Studio apps, Vue Storefronts are independent of the back-end. As a result, they can be utilized across multiple stores. The PWA front can be regulated through simpler API calls making it a highly reusable option.

Comparatively faster than Magento PWA Studio
Magento PWA Studio uses ReactJS while the Vue Storefront uses the Vue as the framework. This makes the Vue storefront Magento PWAs faster and way more responsive than the other.

Our say on Magento PWA Studio and Vue Storefront PWA comparison

PWA technology is a blessing for e-commerce merchants as the market is gradually shifting to mobile shopping. The technology is saving resources for the clients while the users are rendered with excellent customer experience.

With Magento coming up with in-house PWA solutions like Magento PWA Studio, the future of mobile shopping seems more lively and promising. At the same time, every job needs variation to stay unique and distinct. 

VueJS does the needful by offering an excellent storefront, which finds a perfect fit in the Magento environment as well. Taken that PWA and both the technologies are constantly growing, we can expect more outcomes in the coming future.

While Magento PWA solutions are easy to carry out manually, they demand to get designed right from scratch. As the leading Magento Development company, we have pre-designed storefronts which can be customized with minimal inputs to save you time and resources. 

In any case, if you feel the urge to hire an experienced agency for your job, you can contact us.