Your PhotoServe Store Is Also An App
How to Install Your Site on Devices
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Did you know your PhotoServe Store is also an app?
Large tech companies have conditioned users of their devices to expect to install apps to access information and use online services, even though it isn’t really necessary unless an app makes use of specific device hardware features that are unavailable to web apps. The reason is because it helps lock people into their ecosystem and also because it is very lucrative for them - Apple for instance takes a 30% cut of all app sales and in-app purchases! Obviously, this would be a severe drag on your burgeoning photography business. Even worse, the process of registering as a publisher and submitting an app and having it approved in an app store is arduous and often arbitrary to further protect their “walled garden”.
Fortunately, there is a solution that allows you to have the best of (nearly) all worlds and that is a “Progressive Web App” or PWA for short.
What a PWA does is allow your website to be installed on a device as though it was an app. Once installed it looks and works just like any other app, has its own icon, and won’t appear to be running inside a web-browser. But no app store is required so you don’t have to share a large chunk of your revenue with the Operating System (OS) manufacturer.
Having an installed app can help make your site more sticky for customers as they have a shortcut icon directly on their home screen rather than just another bookmark within their browser or the need to find a link on social media.
So how do customers install it?
Android Devices
For people on an Android device using Google’s Chrome browser it’s easiest of all - the browser will automatically prompt them to install it as an app! If they are using as different browser or initially skip the prompt, they can always chose the menu option to add it as an app:
Apple iOS / ipadOS devices
Apple is slightly less enthusiastic about promoting PWAs as they were a Google invention to provide a way to circumvent Apple’s lucrative App Store monopoly. Consequently, there is never an automated prompt to install an app, at least for now. But the legislation and consumer demand has forced them support the feature so customers have the ability to add a shortcut in the same way:
