Wednesday, June 20, 2018

Push Notifications: All You Need To Know About Them

Don’t you need to connect to the users in real time?

In a mobile device or a desktop stuffed with applications, push notifications to help the app publishers or websites to maintain relationships with their users. As the name itself suggests, the notification is being pushed even though the application is not running. Thus, a push notification is an incredibly powerful communication channel that app publishers and websites use to send a pop-up message on a mobile device or desktop via push notification services. The message can be sent at any time without a specific request from the user. The permission for adding push notifications is usually taken by the app publisher at the time of installation.

How do push notifications work?



In order to send a push notification, one needs to set up a server. This setup server sends a notification to Apple’s Push Notification Service (in case of iOS and Mac) and Google Cloud Messaging (in case of Microsoft Windows and Android), which then sends the notification to your device.

Why should you care?



The push notification is like a text message or a text alert and could include promotions of events, products, offers, best deals, headlines, and weather reports among others. The browser push notifications help you increase traffic on your website since it enables you to keep your users updated with all new products and services even when they aren’t using your website in real-time. The users choose to subscribe to these notifications from specific websites on browsers such as Chrome, Safari, and Firefox. Chrome and Firefox push notifications work a lot like push notifications on phone device and can work on multiple platforms. These browser push notifications ensure the following:

o Help you reach bigger audience globally as Safari, Chrome, and Firefox have a combined market share of more than 75%. Also, it does not require a registration or any specific requests from the users each time.

o Ease in opt-in and opt-out along with quick delivery generates a more comfortable interface for the users as they can subscribe and unsubscribe using a single click.

o Exceptional rates of conversion make it one of the best marketing and sales strategy as compared to the bulk emails that eventually end up in spam folders of the users and lower attrition rates.

 o Reduce cost for the business and the user owing to the fact that it uses less support.

Before you implement the web browser push notifications, read this:



  • Unlike mobile push notifications that take the permission while the time of installation, web push notifications need permission from the user explicitly.
  • You have to take care of the character limit that these web browser push notifications allow (generally 40 to 140 characters). Hence, you have to equip yourself with copywriting skills in order to create an impact on the targeted audience.
  • You have to schedule web push notifications by time zone the user is located in to get a prompt response.
  • You must understand how often you should send the web push notifications. Being ignorant about it could make you lose out on potential users.
  • Instead of treating all users the same way, try to filter their preferences during the time of opt-in to maintain strong user base.