Web Push Notification – The situation described below would have been faced by many bloggers and marketing experts, but let’s face it.
As a veteran player or a novice, you would definitely publish a content that is highly relevant, rich in value and has a strong call to action. But, it reaches out to only a handful of people from the subscriber’s list!
With a glut of apps available in the enterprise mobile app development market, everyone is striving for grabbing the users’ attention. It has become important to reach out to potential customers irrespective of their location and time.
Even after reaching out to them, the average click-through rates for emails hover between 2-4 percent only.
Users are fickle, they may change their decision of keeping the installation on and uninstall it within 30 days if they find it dormant.
From the user’s perspective, even if you hate web push notifications or love them, they are an onslaught of marketing strategy and is accepted with all grace and craze.
This new kid, website push notification are the clickable, prompt messages that will appear straight on the mobile device. You receive a pop-up notification, just like an SMS on the web browsers like Chrome, Firefox, Opera, etc.
It gets delivered on the mobile or desktop screen at any time only to the users who have opted-in to receive them. The notification will be delivered regardless of closed or open browser.
It is a no-brainer task of delivering rich content, but engaging users timely requires much effort and demographic study.
Push notifications are used to increase the retention rate of the audiences on the websites. Let’s read further to know what constitutes the push notifications.
While designing a push notification, try to include the following things:
- Title;
- Description;
- A Landing URL;
- Logo;
- Call to Action button;
- images (only if necessary).
Once the things and the design is finalized, know which browsers support the push notifications;
- The Android, Windows, Linux and OS X platform supports Chrome and Firefox, whereas, Safari is supported on iOS and OS X.
- Every browser uses its own notification delivery service, Chrome uses Firebase cloud messaging, Safari uses Apple push notification service and Firefox uses MDN servers.
- Registration needs to be done on the browser by the developer and is only supported on Google chrome push notifications.
How do they actually work?
The first step, Users’ permission on the website:
It is of utmost importance to have the user’s permission who is actually willing to subscribe for push notifications.
For starting the service on your browser, you need to have an APN certificate. With this certificate, the browsers provide standard API calls and asking the user for subscription permission.
If accepted, the browser will prompt the user with notifications. The task completion happens with a Push API that receives the requests and sends the messages from the server to the browser.
The requests received are saved in the back-end as a subscribers list. This list is used at the time of sending push messages to the users.
The second step, Process of sending the notification:
You have to develop a strategy to market your service/product with the help of push notifications. This includes the following,
First thing first, define your audience base and then design the content accordingly. The content that you showcase should be alluring your customer.
Understand the customer base timing and send the notification accordingly. Set up a standard time where you can catch the maximum customer attention.
Do not throw the notification during the sleeping hours, they are likely to be ignored. Schedule it based on the time zones and time frames.
You can also design the push notification based on different categories like devices, browsers, and locations.
The third step, User activation, and subscription:
An instant notification should pop up as soon as the user subscribes for the service. It is necessary to have an online device to activate the push service.
The browser receives the request, decrypts it and starts the service. It also generates an identical registration key for every registered user.
The fourth and the final step, Placement of notification on the mobile screen:
Type of browsers plays an important role in defining the placement of the notification. It is generally delivered exactly next to the taskbar in
the desktop or may be in the queue of notification tray on Android and iOS phones.
Are you curious and cautious about the advantages, read further to know more?
- Web push notifications generally do not necessarily require a mobile app. You can avail the benefits directly through the web servers on the browsers.
- They have the potential to stimulate user engagement and increase market share.
- Web push notifications are considered an effective way of turning your inactive customer to an active one by re-engaging them.
- They attract users more than email messages.
- Users who have once opted for the push notification rarely opt-out.
- If designed strategically, they can increase the conversion rate to a great extent.
- Web push notifications are a great way to enhance brand awareness and consistency.
Closing Thoughts:
You have this new opportunity to take the customer’s feedback and utilize it all for the betterment of the business.
Choose the mobile app development company wisely and reach out to a larger customer base.
