Progressive WebApps (PWA) are the next mainstay in the mobile ecosystem. It’s basically an app that lives in the cloud.

Committed to a philosophy of continuous improvement and staying on the edge of mobile evolution, even though PWAs are the thing of tomorrow, Marfeel is providing them today so partners can immediately reap the rewards of the enhanced engagement and performance they deliver.

What is a Marfeel PWA? 

A Marfeel PWA is a Marfeel mobile site that provides publishers with the following capabilities, formerly exclusive to just native applications:

  • Sending push notifications in the browser to users that subscribe to them
  • Enabling offline access to a publication
  • Accessing a frictionless app-like experience when users add the site to their homescreen. That is, the site without an address bar and with a splash screen when it runs in the background. When the Marfeel PWA is running, it also has its own windows in the apps carousel.
  • Increased page loading speed.

Value

The boundless benefit of a Marfeel PWA can be illustrated by the significant amount of traffic it delivers. Through the cutting edge features like push notifications through the browser, offline access, and adding a site to the homescreen, Marfeel partners add lifetime value to their traffic by continuously driving users back to their site. 

Not to be overlooked, the significant reduction of loading speed delivered from adopting this new technology, doesn't only further optimize the user experience, it also provides partners with an invaluable boost in SEO.

Technical details

PWAs are built on top of service workers which are essentially a JavaScript (JS) set of new APIs. These APIs allow Marfeel to run some JS in the background even when the user is not browsing the website. It's what enables Marfeel partners to, for example, send push notifications when the user is offline. 

It also gives Marfeel the ability to intercept requests between the browser and the partner domain or URL, providing the technical capability to deliver offline access.

The speed enhancement is another byproduct of integrating this technology: It allows Marfeel to independently detect when a reader is browsing on a mobile device and send the request directly to Marfeel servers, reducing the roundtrip between Marfeel's servers and the publisher's desktop site, shaving a significant portion off of Marfeel's already industry-leading standards. 

Considerations

To enable the cutting-edge features of Marfeel PWAs, publishers must serve their sites under HTTPS. The reason for this is that the APIs like service worker that provide the powerful features that define PWAs, require the explicit permissions only delivered through HTTPS.

Marfeel PWAs are compatible for both Android and Safari users. For a complete list of the compatible web browsers, see this article.

For more information regarding Marfeel PWAs, see one of the following articles: