Web push notifications are an increasingly popular communications channel, granting companies the ability to send promotional or informative content quickly and directly. Push notifications have the power to reach new and prospective customers, engage existing customers, drive conversions, and more. However, this power often gets abused, which turns off customers and leads to lost sales opportunities. Adopting best practices for effective web push notifications will ensure that your brand can provide regular messaging without driving away your audience.
DO: Provide Opt-in Prompt Customization
Push notifications are an excellent way to engage with your site visitors. Plus, you can use the clickthrough rate (CTR) to determine how relevant your messages are to users. However, before you can gather that data, you must ask them to opt-in.
Receiving an opt-in can be the difference between converting and getting blocked, so tread lightly by issuing a silent prompt. If you’re concerned about potentially interrupting customers’ exploration of your app or site, you can also implement a delayed opt-in. Here, the site visitor is only asked to opt-in after they’ve already spent a certain amount of time browsing.
DON’T: Overwhelm Your Website Visitors
The average consumer spends 5.94 seconds on a website’s homepage. And even if you count the rest of the site, this average only scales up to 15 seconds. This brief window means you have mere moments to impress and engage visitors. However, you don’t want to overwhelm them.
If you’re using a web push funnel and sending bulk messages, chances are you’re overloading your users with notifications. This can quickly lead to frustration. At best, visitors will simply block or ignore your excess of messages but continue browsing. At worst, they’ll decide to leave, crushing your site or app with astronomical bounce rates.
The best practice to remedy this potential burnout and irritation is to use frequency capping. It limits the number of daily notifications customers receive. Once they reach their daily limit, your funnel won’t send them more, even if they’re in an eligible segmented group.
DO: Keep Your Messages Short and Sweet
As a marketer, you always want to find ways to stand out from the competition. You can do so by using your web push notifications strategically.
Your customers receive many daily notifications, which means they get notification fatigue quickly. Help your well-thought-out messages stand out by keeping your titles, descriptions, and messaging short and sweet.
The longer the message, the lower the CTR, so a best practice when crafting your content is to keep your titles around 20 words. For the body of your text, between 20 and 60 words. And to test the finished product, don’t just check it on a single browser or OS — consider testing it on both the oldest and newest browser version your audience is likely to use, and map your designs from there.
DON’T: Send Generic Content
No customer wants to feel like they’re just a number, so be sure that you aren’t sending the same generic message to each one of your visitors. Doing so not only wastes your efforts but also reduces the efficacy of your notifications. Moreover, it keeps you from learning valuable information about your ideal customer base. The best way to fix this is by weaving personalization into your web content.
Contrary to popular practice, generic content also includes sending simplistic welcome messages every time someone new visits your site. Visitors are not guaranteed customers, and greeting them with ubiquitous messaging can lower their impression of your brand and deter people from revisiting your site.
DO: Use Rich Media
They say that a picture is worth a thousand words, and using the right imagery can have subscribers thinking about terms like “shop now” and “buy.” Users may not always read the text in your notifications, but gifs, bold text, and images can capture their attention and deliver the message in ways words sometimes cannot. Adding rich media makes your push notifications more striking and gives users a preview of what they will experience if they click through to your site or app.
Factoreal
Web push notifications are an effective communication channel if you know how to implement them properly. With these best practices, you can delight your customers and convert new ones with ease. Incorporating an omnichannel marketing tool like Factoreal can also help streamline your process by empowering you to schedule automated messages and design stunning reusable templates.
To learn more ways Factoreal can enhance your business, contact our team anytime.
