Progressive Web App (PWA) allow websites to leverage modern web capabilities to deliver an app-like experience to users on mobile devices. As search engines look for PWAs on websites for mobile, turning on this feature will improve your SEO.
The app allows users to add an icon for your magazine to their mobile device home screens on the public side, which in turn allows them to later browse any pages they have previously visited (and only those) while offline.
In other words, when a user is online the site will act like a regular website, but if a user is offline, it will load items from the cache.
For Safari iOs devices, the user can use the "save to home screen" option. In Chrome, the user is prompted. On other devices and browsers it would also be the user who adds your magazine to their home screen manually, if they wish.
Most of the benefits are in better performance and SEO ranking which the user won't really notice, as listed below.
Benefits
- The various speed improvements significantly raise the mobile performance scoring for your site
- Your users can continue to read previously downloaded content offline
- Website can be "bookmarked" to readers' home screen like an app
In speed tests using Metro Publisher's standard themes, we registered consistent scores in the top 90% in all key areas measured by Google's Lighthouse developer tool.
However, third party widgets, additional JavaScript, etc. may reduce any one of these benchmarks. This is especially true for third party services such as ad servers and analytics tools.
As a result, it is important for website owners to be selective about which and how many third party services are put into use. There is always a trade-off between the benefits of such services and the effects on performance.
Lighthouse analytics results for standard Metro Publisher theme.
How to activate PWA
1. Upgrade your website to Use SSL
This feature requires that your site is secure. Luckily, in Metro Publisher it is easy to set up SSL. It takes only a few seconds and it's free! To do that, the account owner should follow the instructions here:
2. Opt in to PWA
Log in to your Metro Publisher work site as an Admin:
- Go to Settings
- Then to Others
- Check the option for Progressive Web Apps
3. Add PWA version of your logo to your site
Log in to Metro Publisher as an Admin:
- Go to Design > Edit Current Design
- From the edit palette, click Logos and Colors > Other Logos.
- In the pop-up, you'll see two options for PWA Logos. Add two square versions of your logo. One at 192x192 pixels and one at 512x512 pixels. These will be used by various mobile devices when a user saves your website to their home screen.
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