What is web push notification?

Web push notifications are quick, bite-sized messages that are pushed to users, once they have agreed to receive notifications from their favourite websites. These days, most of the businesses are using this new, sophisticated-yet-simple technology. Its primary use is to deliver the content as fast as possible. Push notifications on the web are strictly a permission-based communication system, as with mobile app notifications.

Initially, push notifications were dedicated to the world of mobile apps, only. Now, websites are enjoying the same power as mobile apps with the push notifications. There’s no need to download anything to receive notifications, in fact, all that should be done is just to click “Allow” and you are subscribed. Because of its ease of subscription, over 18 billion chrome notifications are sent every day.

A marketer enjoys better opt-in rates with the push notifications as it’s just a one-tap process. Building a marketing list is 30 times faster with web push than with email subscription.

As per Econsultancy and Monetate survey, 94% businesses believe personalization is the key factor to drive performance and push notification help with this, very well. It’s quite expedient to personalise title, description, image and CTA of a web-push. The ease of personalization also makes the web push more appealing, visually.

Web push has a great delivery mechanism as it can be easily delivered to a device which further helps marketers to communicate swiftly.

Why are marketers using push notifications?

1. Retargeting becomes easy with web push: Using web push makes it easier to loop the users back to the website for B2B companies and it also generates sales for them by alerting the user about the trial expiration. It also accelerates and boosts the chances of sales through the discount offers. Adding a discount offer actually increases the chances of user making a transaction then and there, instead of pondering about it when the trial expires. With push notifications, businesses can avoid media buying or wait for the user to browse their website again. It’s easier for them to communicate swiftly and drive impact while enjoying an average CTR of 25-30%.

2. Content Marketing: 88% of B2B companies are using Content Marketing to engage more buyers through spreading awareness and driving decision-making process. Businesses are now focused to increasingly use push notifications to communicate with the users by sending out everything including case studies, how-to guidelines, polls and surveys. If content is king, then its distribution is a key factor to get a run.

Product updates and announcements should be delivered to users to let them know how they can be beneficial. Users need to know everything about the product they use, hence it is necessary to update them about every single change or improvement. It’s like pushing a newsletter product update on a notification.

3. Enhancing Retention: Businesses are now increasingly starting to focus on user retention and engagement instead of rushing for user acquisition. Basically, success of any business depends on the long-term customer engagement. Push notifications have changed the game altogether by engaging those customers who have started visiting your website less frequently.

Web push offers various benefits including direct engagement in real time, straightforward call to action, cross-browser support and higher conversions. Also, it helps the marketer to get their customer’s attention right away which further encourages a customer to establish a better relation with the brand.

Another great benefit is that you can also send out local time-based notifications to the users living in a different time zone, which would increase your potential prospects and clients. While sending out these push notifications, you can further categorise as per the on-site behaviour and the user’s location.

Final Words:

Currently, usage of web push notification counts at about 2,50,000 websites, out of overall 200 million active websites. While web-push is a powerful tool to achieve customer engagement and increase sales, however, one should know how to use it wisely. It won’t hurt a customer to disable notifications on the web, just like they do with the mobile push when they are not happy with the notification.

As a form of communication between you and your brand, you should restraint to a certain number of notifications that you should be sending out to customers to make them embrace effective push notifications. With Apple’s safari and Chrome’s web push, there’s a long way to go for web push.