Initially, push notifications meant notifications from various applications on smartphones and tablets, which could be observed in the so-called “curtain”. And recently, push notification technology has been actively used on websites.
You have probably already seen pop-ups on many sites that appear in the upper left corner and ask for permission to send you notifications. The window appears when you first enter the site and will "haunt" you until you subscribe to notifications or refuse them. Below, for non-advertising purposes, is an example of such a notification from one of the most popular online stores in Ukraine.
What happens if you still dare to subscribe to notifications? - nothing bad will happen. If the resource is of interest to you, then you can safely subscribe and receive the latest and most important information from it. Yes, yes, the most important! There are unwritten rules for sending push notifications, according to which resources should send such messages to their subscribers no more than 1-3 times a day (the most important top news for news resources) or less often (once every few days) for sites that are engaged in sales.
These notifications also look very harmless - they are pop-up windows with a notification title and a small image at the bottom of the screen on the right. You can click on it and go to the corresponding page of the site or just close this window.
What devices and browsers does this technology work on?
Yes, push notifications do not work everywhere. Users of Chrome (Windows, OS X, Linux, Android), Firefox (Windows, OS X, Linux) and Safari (OS X) browsers will be able to see them and experience all the pleasure of using them, both on computers and on mobile devices. . The technology is not yet supported by other browsers.
Benefits of push notifications
If you are the owner of a site, then you can also think about whether to install a subscription to such notifications on your resource. Such messages have a number of advantages compared to subscribing to e-mail newsletters:
- According to statistics, a higher percentage of people subscribe to such notifications (compared to the number of subscriptions to e-mail newsletters).
People don't like it when their mail is flooded with spam, and such notifications do not cause any inconvenience. You either follow them or simply close them, they are not piled up anywhere. The subscription percentage itself depends on the reputation of your site in the eyes of its visitors and on the subject of the site.
- Push notifications have a high percentage of deliverability and conversions - a significantly larger number of people click on such notifications than from e-mail newsletters.
- Sending such notifications will not take much time.
You don't have to spend hours on “letter layout”, thinking over every word and other nuances of e-mail newsletters. All you need to do is to phrase the title of the notification well so that people really want to click on it.
Setting up such a mailing list takes only a few minutes and has quite good flexibility. You will be able to send messages by ranking subscribers by regions, by site pages from which the subscription was made (i.e. by interests), by date of subscription, by devices and browsers.
Here is an example of such a setting on the service we use:
Do you need to subscribe to such notifications on your site?
The technology works best on news resources. Many people do not mind getting the hottest news in a timely manner, especially from a resource they trust. But, if you are the owner of an online store or service site with a large number of regular customers, this technology can also help you increase sales. You will be able to send your loyal subscribers information about new products in your catalog, promotions and special offers.
It is also worth noting that most large online stores are already actively replenishing their subscriber base. Therefore, it makes sense to install a script for collecting subscribers as soon as possible, until these notifications are “bored” by people and they actively allow them to send notifications.
How to install the script on your site?
- You can install your own push notification subscription collector and the entire database will be collected on your site. But for this, you need to have an SSL certificate installed on your site, which guarantees the security of working with users' personal data.
- If you do not have an SSL certificate, you can use one of the many services that provide such a service. You can choose the service of your choice. Each of them has its own working conditions and tariffs for mailings.
Today we use a service that allows you to send push notifications absolutely free of charge to a base not exceeding 2000 subscribers.
Installing such a script from the mailing service is quite easy and fast, which means that the implementation of the technology on the site is very cheap. It will not be difficult for you to recoup the costs of its implementation and mailing lists.
Subscribe to our push notifications. We promise to push you with only the most interesting news and materials!
Author: head of web-development department of strategic Internet marketing agency Star Marketing Alexander Matola.
