From Hate to ❤

How to turn push notifications from annoying distractions into customer sidekicks

Dylan Romero
Microsoft Design

--

Photo by DESIGNECOLOGIST on Unsplash

I don’t need to tell you how obnoxious push notifications can be; we’ve all been blasted with an app’s tone-deaf attempts to grab our attention before. But what if you’re designing a game-changing app that deserves that attention? How will your customers know about all that game-changingness if you don’t send out the occasional, helpful notification?

You want a lot of people to use your app, but you also want to avoid being added to that list of hilariously bad notifications or worse: get uninstalled. That’s where Minimum Lovable Notifications come in.

First, a quick refresher on some acronyms. You’ve probably heard of Minimum Viable Product (MVP):

MVP
The version of a new product that brings back the maximum amount of validated learning about your customers with the least effort.

But you may not have heard of Minimum Lovable Product (MLP):

MLP
The version of a new product that brings back the maximum amount of love from your early tribe members with the least effort.

Push notifications are the voice of a product, so stretching the definition of MLP to include how we speak to customers is an essential part of being customer obsessed. So, if we borrow from the MLP definition to whip up a more specific one for spreading the love through well-crafted notifications, we get Minimum Lovable Notifications (MLN):

MLN
A notification that provides the maximum amount of value in the right context and in the fewest words possible.

A push notification that provides value in a non-contextual vacuum is merely viable. But a notification that provides that value at the right time and in the right place without interrupting focus becomes lovable.

5 Ways to Build a Minimum Lovable Notification

1. Show them what they’re missing

Don’t use the fear of missing out (ugh… FOMO) against your customers. And don’t write push notifications so vague that people have no idea what they’re supposed to be FOMOing about. For example, a message that ominously warns “You’re not done setting up!” makes it feel like you’re missing out, but missing out on what?

Maybe creating an account unlocks all the good stuff in your app or adding more personal details to an account improves the experience in some way. If so, tell customers about the good stuff instead of conjuring up a vague promise that may not fulfill their expectations. Not matching customer expectations can erode trust over time, or even immediately, leading to that dreaded app uninstall.

2. Unbury the lede

Attention spans are shortening for a reason: between our computers, phones, and TV, there’s massive competition for our attention. On average, an office worker is interrupted every three minutes. So it shouldn’t be too surprising that most readers only see the first 11 characters of text in a header.

Reward your customer’s attention with notifications that get to the point quickly. Front load action verbs to show immediate value and give a clear call to action.

3. Build trust with truth

Converting and retaining customers is more important than clickthrough rate (CTR), but building trust in your notifications is more important than all those metrics combined. How do you build trust? Tell the truth — and be specific about it.

Any marketer worth her salt can get clicks, but the customer journey doesn’t stop there. If you send a notification generically promising “Free ice cream!” you’ll get a lot of clicks. But if you only have pistachio ice cream, many of those clickers will be disappointed, and a few will start to distrust your notifications.

A better notification would be “Free pistachio ice cream.” Yes, the CTR is likely to fall, but so will the number of disappointed customers.

4. Target the right audience

“Free pistachio ice cream” may be more specific than saying “Free ice cream,” but it’s still not ideal. Instead, send the notification to only pistachio-loving customers and save all the pistachio-haters from an unnecessary notification in the first place.

Every irrelevant notification a customer gets trains them to ignore future messages from your product.

5. Respect people’s time

Constantly inundating customers with notifications in hopes of wearing them down isn’t a great way to build warm feelings. Repeated exposure to a stimulus (e.g. push notifications) leads to a decrease in responsiveness after repeat presentations of that stimulus. Our research team found that negative habituation is especially pronounced when previous exposure to a stimulus hasn’t been associated with a rewarding experience (e.g. previous notifications have not contained useful information that should be acted upon immediately).”

A negative association with your product is not the kind of habit you want customers to build. If someone clicks “No” on a free trial, don’t pepper them with more push notifications. Instead, include passive upsells in the right places at the right times — namely, when your customer’s experience would actually improve if they used your righteous premium features.

The Right Amount of Pushy

There are way too many lovable apps, products, and services that never get the chance to shine. In a parade of push notifications, make sure your unique, delightful content gets to the right eyeballs at the right time.

Have tips of your own you’d add to the lovable list? Or examples of notifications that are lovable/not-so-lovable? Are you pro-pistachio ice cream and want to defend its honor? Let’s talk about it in the comments!

To stay in-the-know with Microsoft Design, follow us on Twitter and Facebook, or join our Windows Insider program. And if you are interested in joining our team, head over to aka.ms/DesignCareers.

--

--

Dylan Romero
Microsoft Design

Writer and manager of writers at Microsoft. Puns always intended. Views are my own, but you can have them too if you want.