Progressive Web Applications (PWA) are a type of app that is consumed from the browser, an interface that allows displaying a website as an application, working as a fusion between an app and a website. Given its characteristics, a PWA is a very effective solution for the audio-guide services of museums, monuments or places of tourist interest that cannot afford an attended service or want to complete it at this time of digital transformation.
GVAM is developing a first PWA project for the Palau de la Música Catalana, which will be released in July. Access to audiovisual content that will guide the view of the Palau will be even more direct and simple than through an app.
We will also complete the audio guide services with PWAs the Seville Cathedral and the Barcelona Football Club. Analyzing the needs of their visitors and users, they have chosen to develop the PWA project together with GVAM to offer an alternative means of use during COVID19, easy to use and intuitive. Furthermore, like any other GVAM application, this PWA has all the functionalities and data systems of the GVAM technological ecosystem.
Progressive web applications (PWA) such as audio guides allow you to use any multimedia content: videos, images, games, etc. You can maintain the functions of navigation by route, numerical keyboard or map of the enclosure. They are compatible with the rest of the solutions that these clients already have thanks to GVAM: rental devices, APPs for downloading, microsites on the web, etc. And of course they connect to the same support systems as the content manager Ventour to incorporate more content, languages or accessibility aids, as well as GStats to collect data and obtain the complete statistics of our systems.
GVAM PWAs stand out for their advantages for museums, monuments and tourist sites.
The speed and performance are the most important features of PWAs, offering a low bounce rate and loading content faster than a responsive website. If we open the pages from our mobile browser we can see that the screen and navigation are practically the same as the applications for iOS or Android. You only need an Internet connection and you don’t need to install anything!
Another advantage of PWA compared to mobile apps is that they can be tracked by search engines like Google, so their content is indexed. The possibilities of promotion, from the ticket sales or reservation pages, are increased.
In the field of museums and monuments, the user makes sporadic use of the content in situ and encounters barriers such as waiting time, available disk space or battery consumption. All this makes it difficult for them to download an app on the phone. On the other hand, with a PWA the app gains strength by being able to access with a single link and by not having to download it to see the contents. In addition, we do not give up the option of leaving it accessible on the desktop of the mobile device in case the user wants to use it multiple times.
In conclusion, GVAM’s PWA or progressive web applications blur established barriers between what is understood as a mobile application and a web. They are the answer to speed up the speed and current needs of users, also offering a pleasant, friendly and intuitive interface for users.
