The key benefits of mobile app push notifications over web push notifications

If you have a product business or any other business, you must know the difficulties of keeping your user base engaged as time passes.

To be in the marketing trend, you have approached a WooCommerce mobile app builder to create your app.

However, building a mobile app is just not enough. With time, all marketing channels decrease their efficiency. You need to be aware of new marketing tactics if you want to have continued user engagement, no matter what kind of business you are in. Keep adapting to the channels your target audience wants to engage with you.

Push notifications are one of the most important marketing tactics that you should be using in your mobile app. This instant messaging is just not an effective way to reach your audience in real-time, but a great way to retain them.

Push notification is proven to be a useful tool to provide time-sensitive updates to app users. A study reveals that app users who receive push notifications regularly are more likely to keep using an app.

If your app content is getting lost in the noise, and you want to grow your page views and user engagement, Push Notifications is the marketing tactic you should try your hands on.

Suggested read: How to get 10,000+ app downloads in the first month — Launch like a boss!

If you are thinking to implement notifications on the website or an app, you should know the key differences between Web Push Notifications and Mobile App Push Notifications.

Web Push Notifications vs. Mobile App Push Notifications — The key differences

The difference between Web and Mobile App push notifications is generally based on their use cases, appearance, functionality, users’ reach, opt-in rates, click-through rates, and many more.

However, the loyalty of push users is much higher in mobile apps than on the web.

USE CASES

Web Push Notifications

- SaaS products use notifications for onboarding, guidance, and support.

- Multi-website networks to promote other web properties.

- eCommerce websites to improve users’ transactions by promoting an applicable discount and offers, suggesting related products, and more.

- Social channels to increase user’s activity with relatable notifications.

- Blogs or news websites when publishing new content for readers.

Mobile App Push Notifications

- News apps for sharing breaking news and time-sensitive stories.

- Blog apps use alerts whenever a new post goes live to increase readership.

- eCommerce apps to remind customers about incomplete purchases or approaching big sales days.

- Social networking apps notify users of their regular activity.

- Traffic or weather apps share timely updates considering the state of the local area.

- Dating or gaming apps to remind users when they have not logged in yet.

Make good use of push notifications even if your mobile app does not have a concept that works on the urgent, or need-to-know level. You need to pay attention to your business analytics and users’ personas to determine how push notifications could best be used.

APPEARANCE

In terms of appearance, there is not much of a difference between web or mobile push notifications.

Web Push Notifications

Websites need to explicitly take permission from their users to send them to push messages. Therefore, the first step is getting opt-in from website visitors. As soon as users browse a website, an opt-in box is triggered. When the visitor clicks on ‘Allow,’ they are automatically added to your subscriber list.

Mobile App Push Notifications

By default, whenever a user installs your mobile app, users need to permit the app to send them to push notifications on their device.

On both web and mobile app, users need to allow publishers to send them text messages. Images and videos can accompany these messages. Also, these messages can be included in advanced characters like emojis, which nearly double the open rate of push notifications.

FUNCTIONALITY

The delivery system of push notifications is essentially the same, but both the web and mobile apps have differences in terms of how they can be customized.

Web Push Notification Functionality

- Deliver push notifications to anyone who visits your website and opt-in.

Mobile App Push Notification Functionality

- Send notifications to anyone who opts-in to your app’s push notifications.

- Segment messages based on users’ activities.

- Deliver push notification based on the type of content.

- Allow app users to control how they can receive push notifications

USER’S REACH

Mobile apps are always being used over websites because users spend over 87% of their time on browsing the apps, rather than on the website.

Web Push Notification Reach

- Provide access to 37% of desktop internet users.

- Only reach users who opt-in to use the website.

- Provide access to the users whenever they are at work on their desktop.

Mobile App Push Notification Reach

- 63% of internet traffic occurs on the mobile

- Gives access to your target audience when they:

- first, wake up in the morning

- are commuting to work daily, or

- are at work throughout the day

- Reach all users who have downloaded your app

OPT-IN RATES

With push notifications, the first step is getting people to actually opt-in to them. These notifications give users a simple choice: Allow or Block. However, the content of your website or mobile app and the level of customization available for push notifications can determine how high your opt-in rate can go.

Web Push Notification Opt-In Rate

- Increases 12% opt-in rate

Mobile Push Notification Opt-In Rate

- All Android app users can opt-in to push notifications

- 43% of iOS app users can opt-in to push notifications

CLICK-THROUGH RATES

One of the key differences between web and mobile app push notifications is click-through rate (CTR). Let us take a look:

Web Push Notification User Engagement Rate

- Increases up to 18% CTR

Mobile Push Notification User Engagement Rate

- Boosts 40% CTRs

- Personalized push notifications can increase up to 4x click-through rates

Take this difference into your consideration as there are certain types of businesses that can provide more click-worthy messages to their users than others.

Similarly, if your business relies on engaging with the audience in a relevant and timely way, mobile app push notifications are the way to go. You only need to make them personalize that helps you increase CTR.

With efficient DIY mobile app builders like AppMySite, you can make your own app and can set up and configure push notifications for your app users.

Suggested Read: Complete Guide on Mobile App Analytics Metrics — Measure your App’s Success

Now, you know, Push Notifications can boost your user’s engagement. Let us understand how to configure them on your mobile app.

How to configure push notifications to promote engagement

The power of push notifications to boost mobile app engagement has been excitingly increased in recent years.

Email marketing was once the most craved tool for engaging customers. However, push notifications today are difficult to ignore. These notifications allow you to reach out to each user on their app journey.

Now, you have a way to communicate with your users at any time they are using your application on their device. That is why the strategy of incorporating push notifications into the app has so much potential to engage users. Sometimes, it gets failed too as it carries a lot of risk for misuse.

Here are some tips to make sure you are pushing your users in the right way.

Determine why you are using them

If you send push notification without any purpose to your users, it is doomed to fail. You should know why you want to send any information and what your users will ultimately get from receiving these messages.

Ensure that your push notification strategy is proven to be useful for your audience. Also, it should not lead them to be left with an awful impression, and inevitably, unsubscribe.

Use best practices and proven strategies to make your push notification strategy work.

Create a compelling opt-in message

You need to take your user’s permission before reaching them with push notifications. Android app users, in this case, are automatically opted-in.

While many websites and mobile apps tend to use the Allow/Block message, how will you encourage your users to opt into push notifications?

Unfortunately, with web push notifications, you do not have much choice. With mobile app notifications, on the other hand, you have a huge room for personalization. The more welcoming and personalized the message is, the chances of getting loyal users to opt-in

Push notifications are useful for any business to use. Therefore, you can make them tempting to make opt-outs difficult for your user. However, forcing them to opt-in can destroy their loyalty for your brand.

Send push notifications timely

All push notifications are not equal. You need to segregate the more annoying ones with the relevant ones. This simply means you need to consider the timing before you send them to the user. Timing is an essential factor than ever.

The rhythm of push notifications is also important. Avoid sending them too often. At the same time, do not wait for too long. Otherwise, users will forget who you are and feel interrupted when you start communicating with them again.

Let us understand this with an example: With the New York Times mobile app, breaking news goes live when the story is actually breaking. If they sent the news a day or even a few hours later, their app audience would likely have already heard the news from another source.

That being said, you have to ensure that push notifications go out at the right time of day for your target audience. Well, it is also based on industry as well as geolocation.

You need to look at your users’ behavior to make sure you hit their devices when they’re ready to receive those messages.

Make push notifications relevant

Push notifications are just not all about advertising. It is about building relationships and credibility.

Even small things like transaction confirmations and updates about items on a wish list or purchased items get your brand name out there.

If you are tempted to re-use content from your website for a mobile app, avoid using it. Mobile apps are more personal, and users expect high relevancy. You should never forget your medium.

Your push notifications must be useful. Also, you should know what your users are receiving from such information. When your users start receiving timely and relevant messages, their response and interest go up as a result.

Needless to say, when companies use personalization and segmentation, their apps experience 4 to 7 times the response rate.

If you run a news organization and have an app built with a free online app maker, you need to be careful with notification fatigue. Overloading with a bunch of content can be a huge problem. Deliver the most relevant local stories to your app users.

Use rich content

Push notifications are alike SMS. However, you can deck them out with videos, images, GIFs, and emojis.

A study by Urban Airship shows that illustrative push notifications can get 56% more open rate than those without images.

However, you need to be careful with such notifications.

Using rich content does not mean it adds value every single time you send it to the user. For some notifications, a plain text message could be more impactful rather than illustrative push notification. Ultimately, you need to deliver a useful message to your users clearly and concisely.

When you have created an app with an online app creator and wanted to make a substantial impact on users' experiments with rich content. If the content is used correctly, it can result in higher user engagement and could be a great way to accelerate interest in your mobile app.

Track success of push notifications

There are several tools available today that you can use to analyze your user’s behavior and discover what triggers opt-outs or declines their engagement. You can always use the trusty Google Analytics to measure your users’ activity.

Study the insights and learn about your audience precisely. However, in terms of tracking your push notification strategy, you will need to look at what happens afterward.

It is just not enough to know how many of your app users have received your notifications. You need to see click-through rates, as well. These rates help you indicate what interests your users. And if they have clicked your message, it simply means that they like your message.

Look at the full journey of your users with push notifications to assess whether they are working:

- How many users viewed the notification?

- How many of them clicked through?

- How many users actually made a meaningful engagement with the content from the click?

- Did anyone unsubscribe directly afterward?

- Did anyone uninstall the app from their mobile device completely?

You need to look at both the positive and the negative signs.

The upshot

Push notifications are a new and more powerful medium for communication that requires thinking differently about how you can interact with your target audience.

If these notifications are being done right, they can prove to be extremely influential in increasing the click-through rate and overall traffic. From a user’s perspective, however, these notifications can also be one of the most frustrating marketing tactics.

Remember, push notifications are all about enhancing your users’ app experiences. It is not about getting a superficial statistic like ‘the number of push notifications seen’ up higher.

Therefore, if you have built a mobile app using the WordPress mobile app builder, you will need a comprehensive push notification strategy. By utilizing push notifications in the app, you can potentially reach all your target users, irrespective of browser or device they use.