Progressive web app

A progressive web app is a website that behaves more like a native mobile app. It loads fast, works offline or on slow networks, can be installed on a home screen without going through an app store, and can send push notifications on supported platforms. The term describes a set of capabilities rather than a specific framework or technology. ## What makes a site a PWA The technical requirements are modest. A PWA needs to be served over HTTPS. It needs a web app manifest, a small JSON file that describes the app's name, icons, colors, and how it should launch. It needs a service worker, a background script that intercepts network requests, caches responses, and lets the site load offline. It needs to be responsive and work on any screen size. Most modern web applications meet most of those requirements without additional effort. Adding a manifest and a service worker turns a well-built site into a PWA. Google's Lighthouse tool audits PWA compliance and gives a score. ## What PWAs actually do for shoppers The user-facing benefits are practical. A shopper who bookmarks a PWA to their home screen gets an app-like icon and a full-screen experience without a browser chrome. The site loads instantly on repeat visits because the service worker caches assets. Product pages and cart state can be available offline for browsing. On Android, PWAs can be installed with one tap and send push notifications. On iOS, the experience is more limited: install works but with fewer capabilities, and push notifications only landed with iOS 16.4. This asymmetry is real and worth planning around if push is important. ## The Shopware PWA context In the Shopware ecosystem, "Shopware PWA" was for years a specific product: Shopware's official Vue.js frontend project. That project was archived, and the ecosystem now uses the term more loosely to mean any headless frontend running on Shopware's Store API. Search interest around "Shopware PWA" persists because the topic still shows up in evaluations, but the specific product is no longer active. A modern Shopware storefront delivered on a decoupled frontend can still meet PWA criteria; it just does not have to use the archived project to do so. ## PWA vs headless commerce PWA describes properties of a frontend. Headless commerce describes an architectural separation between frontend and backend. The two overlap: a headless commerce frontend can easily be built as a PWA, and most modern ones are. But a monolithic commerce theme can also be turned into a PWA by adding a manifest and service worker. And a headless frontend is not automatically a PWA if it lacks a service worker or offline strategy. ## How Frntkey relates Frntkey is a Nuxt.js-based ecommerce frontend that can be configured as a PWA. Service worker, manifest, and offline strategy sit on top of the core rendering stack rather than being baked into every project. Whether to enable PWA behavior is a per-project decision based on the merchant's audience and how much offline or app-installation behavior is genuinely useful for their shoppers. Fast Core Web Vitals and server-side rendering deliver most of the visible benefits of a PWA without requiring the full PWA setup. ## Related terms Ecommerce frontend · Core Web Vitals · Server-side rendering · Headless commerce