Our ServicesDevelopment

Progressive Web App Development Without the App Store

A progressive web app installs to the home screen, opens without browser chrome, works when the connection drops and updates the moment you deploy. For most businesses weighing up a native app, it delivers the experience customers actually wanted — from one codebase, discoverable in search, with no review queue standing between a bug and its fix.

What You Get

Included as standard on every engagement — not an upsell list.

Installable app experience

A proper web app manifest with icons for every device size, a standalone display mode, splash screen and theme colour, plus a considered install prompt that appears once a visitor has shown intent rather than immediately on arrival.

Offline capability via service workers

A caching strategy matched to your content: app shell cached first, critical pages precached, API responses served stale-while-revalidate, and a designed offline screen instead of the browser’s dinosaur when the network disappears.

Push notifications where supported

Web push for re-engagement on supported platforms, with permission requested in context rather than on first load, a preference centre for users, and honest guidance from us on current platform limitations before you build a strategy on it.

Performance held to app-like standards

A progressive web app that stutters defeats the point. We enforce a performance budget, code-split routes, preload critical assets, use modern image formats and verify Core Web Vitals on mid-range Android hardware, not just flagship devices.

Native-feeling interface patterns

Bottom navigation within thumb reach, instant route transitions, skeleton states instead of spinners, pull-to-refresh where it fits, and correct mobile keyboard types on every input. The details are what make it stop feeling like a website.

Discoverable and indexable, unlike an app

Your progressive web app is still a website: every screen has a URL, renders server-side or statically, and can rank in search and be shared as a link. You get app-like engagement without giving up the acquisition channel that search provides.

How We Deliver It

Stage by stage, with the approval points marked. Progressive Web Apps follows the same rhythm on every project.

  1. Requirements and capability check

    We list the device capabilities you need — offline, notifications, camera, location, background sync — and verify each against current browser support on your users’ actual platforms before committing to the approach.

  2. Architecture and caching strategy

    We decide what is cached, for how long, and how updates reach installed users. Getting the caching model right early prevents the classic progressive web app failure where users are stuck on a stale version.

  3. Build with an enforced performance budget

    The application is built in Next.js with route-level code splitting, the service worker registered and tested, and bundle size checked at each stage rather than measured with dismay at the end.

  4. Device and network testing

    Testing on real iOS and Android devices across throttled networks and fully offline, verifying install flow, update flow, notifications and every offline fallback screen behaves as designed.

  5. Launch and adoption tracking

    We go live and then measure what matters: install rate, notification opt-in, offline sessions and repeat engagement, so improvements target the step where users are actually dropping out.

What You Receive

The concrete artefacts handed over at the end — files, access and documentation you keep.

  • Installable progressive web app with complete manifest and icon set
  • Service worker with a documented caching and update strategy
  • Designed offline experience and fallback screens
  • Web push notification setup with a user preference centre
  • Lighthouse progressive web app and performance audit results
  • Device test report across real iOS and Android handsets
  • In-context install prompt with tracked conversion
  • Analytics for installs, notification opt-ins and offline usage

Ideal for

If two or three of these sound like your situation, this is the right place to start.

  • You want an app experience without funding two native codebases
  • App store review cycles would slow your release cadence unacceptably
  • Your users work in places with unreliable or intermittent connectivity
  • You need to be found in search as well as used repeatedly
  • You are testing whether an app is worth building at all
  • Your existing site is used heavily on mobile by returning visitors

Tools we use

Standard, portable tooling. The licences, accounts and source stay in your name, so nothing here is a reason you cannot leave.

  • Next.js
  • React
  • TypeScript
  • Service Workers
  • Web App Manifest
  • Web Push
  • IndexedDB
  • WordPress REST API
  • Cloudflare
  • Figma
  • Lighthouse
  • GA4

Live projects where this work did the heavy lifting:

Frequently Asked Questions

The questions we get asked most about Progressive Web Apps.

A progressive web app is a website with three additions: a manifest so it can install to the home screen and open without browser chrome, a service worker so it keeps working offline and loads instantly on repeat visits, and optional push notifications. Underneath it is still a site with URLs that search engines can crawl, which a native app can never be.
Yes. iOS supports home-screen installation, standalone display, service workers and offline caching, and recent versions support web push for apps added to the home screen. There are still differences from Android, including storage eviction after long inactivity and a less prominent install flow. We test on real iOS devices and tell you the specific limitations for your use case.
It can be packaged for the Google Play Store using a trusted web activity, so Android users can install it from the store as usual. Apple’s App Store rules are stricter about apps that are only a website wrapper, so listing there typically requires genuine native functionality. If store presence is essential to how customers find you, we will say so early.
It depends on the caching strategy we design with you. At minimum, previously visited pages and the app shell load instantly without a connection. Beyond that we can cache reference content for full offline reading, queue form submissions and sync them when the connection returns, or store user data locally in IndexedDB. Full offline write support costs more, so we scope it to what you need.
Done correctly it helps. We build with server-side rendering or static generation so crawlers receive full HTML, keep a real URL for every screen, and ship proper metadata and structured data. The speed improvements from caching also support Core Web Vitals. The one genuine risk is a client-only rendering approach that shows crawlers an empty shell, which we do not build.

Ready to start on Progressive Web Apps?

Send us the brief — or just the problem. You will get a written scope, a timeline and a fixed price, usually within one working day.