Web Push Notification: 7 Best Practices to Get Them Right

With the introduction of web push notifications, marketers should know how to best engage and interact with customers through their mobile devices.

 

Notifications are a crucial part of mobile experience. Considering that the majority of people nowadays turn to the internet to look for valuable information, it is important for brands not to come off as intrusive or provide their users with irrelevant content.

 

With that in mind, we have gathered the seven best practices so you can properly implement web push notifications:

 

Utilize a two-step prompting system

It is highly recommended for websites to use a two-step verification system if they are not implementing one yet.

 

Doing so allows you to ask permission from your website visitor if they would like to receive a prompt from you on their web browser.

 

According to Kenneth Sytian of Sytian Productions and a web designer in the Philippines, “Since a lot of users need more time to know what your website has to offer, then it is vital to make a great first impression. You can show the top features of your products and share to them why it matters. Also, give them a reason to subscribe.”

 

Create different push notifications for different countries

Your website might be serving different geographies and people from all around the world would want to engage with you. It is also possible that not all of your website visitors are active at the same time.

 

Hence, you can use web push notification to your advantage. You can use it to schedule your notifications for specific geolocations at the time when most users are active. The caveat, though, is that you might need to schedule multiple locations for each of the timezones.

 

Make use of custom segments

Once you have created your first web push campaign, the next thing that you need to do is to choose your audience.

 

While it is possible to send a notification to your entire audience, that is not a good tactic to implement. What you need to do is to utilize custom segments so that you could target more specific groups of people.

 

The web push platform will track all the important information for you to be able to segment your audience. You can segment according to geographic location, device type, pages that are visited, money spent, time of the last visit, and so much more.

 

Drive omnichannel approach

You could connect your customer data across various channels from web analytics to mobile. That way, you can gain deeper insight into the browsing patterns and behaviors of your customers.

 

Developing an omnichannel approach could be highly effective especially when you are retargeting.

 

For instance, you can target customers who add an item on their cart but did not proceed with the purchase. Using your customer data, you can send a shopping cart link and reminder via web push notification.

 

On the other hand, you get to salvage what could have been a missed opportunity to generate sales.

 

Keep it short

Ideally, all your notifications should be concise and up to point. Keep in mind that your click-through rate decreases as your notification lengthens.

 

Thus, it is advisable that you limit your notification limit to 6-8 words or 70 characters. But you do not have to fill the character count if you do not need them in the first place. This is only to make sure that the highest number of users will engage with your product.

 

To do that, you will need to state your offer, entice your customers, and leave it just the way it is. Keep in mind that both segmentation and personalization will help you get big results.

 

Add large images

Chrome on Android and Windows lets you send a 720 x 480 px rectangular image that shows up in your push notification. These make it bigger and a lot easier to click.

 

This also gives you a lot more real estate on your screen to help you better communicate your message with your audience.

 

Provide relevant content in every web push notification

Providing your target audience with relevant content will help drive engagement, as well as increase conversions.

 

Sending an avid sports fan or a tech geek with web push notifications that are related to entertainment or lifestyle, niches that they will unlikely read, will only drive them away.

 

It is because users get easily frustrated with content that they think is irrelevant. Intelligent segmentation is important so that you can ensure that you are targeting the right group of users.

 

Over to You

Some marketers are not simply using web push to its maximum potential, which is unfortunate.

 

When used properly, a well-timed web push notification can drive engagement, revenue, and loyalty with utmost speed and efficiency.

 

You can use this feature to communicate directly with customers and make you better equipped to engage with them in a meaningful way, creating a strong user-brand relationship.

 

The important thing here is leveraging this feature correctly and using it to its full effect. That’s because it makes a significant difference between a user who buys something one time into a loyal and happy shopper.