PWA implementation for BRW online store

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The Black Red White Group is a Polish furniture manufacturer and distributor that offers a wide range of furniture and interior accessories.

The group comprises Black Red White S.A. and 18 subsidiaries, of which 10 are in foreign countries. Its products are available in almost 60 markets worldwide.

Tasks and objectives

Black Red White focuses on meeting the expectations of those using computers and mobile devices. As part of latest optimization works on the www.brw.ol online store, we have impemented the Progressive Web App (PWA) technology.

To adapt the website to the technology implemented, it was necessary to redesign the website, enhance the shopping cart mechanisms and improve the UX for mobile users. 

We have been developing e-commerce tools for BRW for oven 10 years.

The service has many functionalities dedicated to retail customers. It presents extensive product cards enabling the ability to check for details such as fronts, bodies, or table-top colour, as well as key features like assembly instructions, users' reviews, or related products, and the published content is enhanced by the inclusion of YouTube videos. We have completed a series of works to improve the usability of the service and optimised it for search engine positioning.

Thanks to the implementation of PWA, the Client's new online store works like a standard website but has the look and feel of an application. What is more, PWA eliminates the need to download and install a conventional application on the device.

All you have to do is open the page in your browser. The main mechanism behind PWA is the Service Worker, which allows data to be processed offline. Thanks to the Service Worker, all store pages (except for the shopping cart) are available offline.

PWA allows you to browse the store offline

Any connection made to the server to retrieve information about a particular sub-page is through the Service Worker. It stores data in indexedDB using the Network First (Network Falling Back to Cache) strategy. This ensures that the system keeps track of the user's actions, even offline.

When the user reconnects to the Internet, the information is sent to Google Analytics. This solution can be used to analyze the behavior of potential customers. To make the site load faster when navigating through it, we used Single Page Application (SPA) technology. This allows for dynamic rendering of page elements as the user browses through them.

The speed of page loading is further improved with the Server-Side Rendering (SSR) technology, which renders pages directly on the server without needing to download and process data beforehand.

We based the SSR on the Nuxt framework on the Node.js server. PWA technology ensures that the content is displayed correctly on any device, such as phones, computers, and televisions, making it easy to use and providing a positive customer experience. 

4th place in the Koszyk Roku 2020 ranking 

Koszykroku.pl is a research and ranking of Poland's most user-friendly online stores. Its authors, Twisto and EDISONDA, focused on testing the mobile versions of websites, PWA’s and applications. The research was conducted among the 100 most frequently visited online stores in Poland to evaluate the ease and convenience of the shopping process and the mobile interface 

Benefits for the Client

• PWA technology increases the capabilties of the online store,
• application works smoothly, improving the mobile experience,
• comfort of use also in offline mode,
• technologies used support the positioning of the website.