Jazz up your Push Notifications
Hope all of you would realize importance of push notifications in mobile (app) first world.
Push Notification has become the strongest medium to interact with existing relevant users, reach out to them with right (personalized) stories, news, offers, products at the right time (when they occasionally open).
Apart from personalizing time of sending and the content itself Android has so many funky options which remain under utilized by most of the companies.
Sharing resources where to best utilize the value & features of push notifications.
Android kat-kat and above can be notification customization can be broadly classified as
- Visual changes to the actual notification to improve CTR
- Under the hood features to improve visibility of notifications (open rate)
Following image will help you visualize the flexibility to customize a push notification. All the fields below can be customized as per requirement for the push notification.
One may now use creativity to use the flexibility — eg show 3 personalized recommended products, most trending articles/stories.
To improve open rates following options can be used
a) Change vibration pattern
b) Change LED light color
c) Provide custom sound when notification arrives
d) Change priority for push notifications
You may like to read the documentation here
Getting started with Push notification? This and this might be useful.
However all the features should be used carefully and not be over done as some users might find it intrusive.
Recently there was a popular thread in Reddit on how notification flexibility should NOT be used.
Summarizing the points below
The 10 Commandments of Notifications
1) Thou shalt not nag or remind me to open thy app.
2) Thou shalt have one button to turn off all notifications from thy app, and then if ye wish it, thou may include more fine-grained notification controls.
3) Thou shalt make it easy to set thy app’s notifications to silent, which means no sound and no vibration.
4) Speakingeth of vibration, thou shalt vibrate only when specifically requested, and ye shalt never set notification vibration on by default.
5) Remember: place no icons in my status bar by default, only when I specifically requesteth them.
6) Thou shalt not make notifications persistent and hard to dismiss without good reason, like if thine notification has an actionable button or something else worthwhile and good.
7) Honor thy limits on repetitive notifications: no more than one notification over a reasonable period of time. Basically, if someone sends me ten messages over a 30 second period, I should get ONE notification, not ten. For cryingeth out loud.
8) Honor thy limits on priority: thine notifications should not be special by default. Only messaging and communication apps should “pop up” by default, everyone else shall remember thine appropriate place and get out of my face.
9) Thou shalt not create custom notification sounds without permission, just use the default notification sound by default.
10) Thou shalt not make your notifications settings inconsistent or hard to find in your app.
Original thread.
Having said this, in my experience I have seen push notifications delivering value addition to the core business metrics upwards of 6%.
Reach out to me on Twitter or Medium for any queries, feedback and tips on improving push notifications.
