Website Push Notifications - Best Use Cases?

[Anand Kansal]

Hey Everyone,

I wanted to start a discussion in this group around website push notifications and what are the best use cases for this technology.

Disclosure: We've just launched a tool that lets websites send push notifications. It's very new and we wanted to take feedback from knowledgeable members of this group on what they think are the approriate cases in which a website push notifications should be preferred over email, or other channels of communication.

Some tidbits of information we've received from our customers so far: website push notifications are most useful to send information regarding time-bound discounts (such as offers which are expiring in a couple of hours or a couple of days). It is also very useful to send personalised updates and alerts (where the object of the communication is just to provide some important information and an email could be overkill).

I'm curious to know: what are your thoughts on website push notifications? How do you see them evolve and change the online space? And what situations and cases are most appropriate for using website push notifcations as compared to, say, emails or SMS or Facebook/Twitter messages.

Would love to get everyone's thoughts on this.

Anand Kansal

[Anand Kansal]

Hey guys, looking for some interesting responses to this.

Just in case you're wondering about website push notifications, it is a technology which enables a website to send a push notification. It works very similar to app-style push notifications, the difference being that 1)there is no need of an app download and 2)it works on all three major devices (desktop, mobile and tablet).

Ever since Chrome enabled push notifications for its desktop and mobile browser, they have become the new talking point in the online world. In fact, VentureBeat recently covered us, PushCrew in an article with some great comments on the power of web push notifications. Check it out here: http://venturebeat.com/2015/12/03/wingify-launches-pushcrew-now-anyone-can-send-push-notifications-to-any-website/

[hello_5]

Web push notifications are notifications that you receive in your desktop browser or mobile browser. They are delivered from the server to the user even when the user is not on your website and sometimes when the browser is not open.
Web push notifications are easily set up in your website. A mobile app is not needed to receive any notifications.

Anatomy of web push notifications
Web push notifications contains the following elements:

Title: Subject of the message. It catches the attention of the user. Ex, Buy 1 Get 1 Free.
Content: Body of the message. It should be short and direct. Character count varies between browsers.
Domain URL: The domain which has sent the notification.
Notification Icon: You can add an icon to your notification. This can be the website logo.
Browser Icon: The logo of the browser rendering the notification.
Note: Web push notifications vary in appearance by operating system and browser.

How web push notifications works
Any website can send web push notifications after installing Javascript code to enable them.
Users have to opt-in to receive push notifications before they start receiving them. As part of the opt-in process, the browser displays a built-in prompt to ask the users permissions. This a browser-based opt-in prompt.
Website can also show a soft-ask opt-in prompt implemented with HTML/CSS/Javascript. This is a strategy for securing an opt-in other than than just showing the browser-based opt-in prompt without any additional context.
When the users indicate to receive notifications through the soft-ask opt-in prompt, then the browser-based opt-in prompt is displayed. Once the users are subscribed using the browser-based opt-in prompt, their subscription information is stored, and then they can start receiving notifications.
The web push notification is sent to users (reference by their subscription information) through an API call to a respective browser cloud manager – like GCM, APNs, etc. The cloud manager validates and delivers the message to the right browser.
Once the browsers come online, the push service delivers the message and the browser displays the message.

Browser support
Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Safari and Edge currently support web push notifications. Supported browsers vary by vendor.
Notifications vary in appearance between browsers and operating systems. Some notifications might use the native notification centers.

Note: Not every mobile device can receive web push notifications. Apple mobile devices (iOS) do not currently support mobile web push notifications. So, users using Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Safari and Edge on an iPhone or iPad cannot receive web push notifications.

How to implement web push notifications
You need to use a third-party service such as Webpushify.
The implementation steps are:

Create an account in Webpushify
Register your domain in Webpushify console
Install a JavaScript SDK (code snippet)
Website owners can start by registering service workers for Chrome, Firefox, Opera and Edge browsers
Website owners must generate certificates for Safari browsers.
Start sending notifications using Webpushify console

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[Dani]

We don’t use push notifications, but I suppose our best use case would be for chat notifications and notifications that there is a new post in a topic you are watching.