Izooto Is a Leading Web Push Notification Tool Used by Websites to Retarget and Engage with Visitors Who Have Left the Website
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iZooto is a leading Web Push Notification tool used by websites to retarget and engage with visitors who have left the website. 1. What Are Web Push Notifications? Web push notifications are clickable rich content messages sent to your device by a website or a web app. Web Push notifications can delivered to your device, mobile or desktop, even when the user is not on your website. These notifications can only be sent to users who have opted-in to receive these notifications. Web push notifications or browser notifications are supported by Chrome, Firefox, Edge and Safari. You can learn more know more about Safari push notifications and Edge push notifications here. As these notifications are delivered directly to the user’s device, users don’t have to be present on the website to receive these notifications. This makes web push notifications extremely visible and also easy to respond to. Push Notifications are best used for delivering time bound content and engage users. Some of the popular use cases of push notifications include retargeting users abandoning shopping cart, activating dormant users with offers, retaining users with personalized content and more. 1.1 What are web push notifications used for? Just like native app notifications, web push notifications are meant to facilitate timely flow of information. To subscribe or opt-in to these notifications, users are not expected to download and install an application. Users can simply subscribe to these notifications by clicking on the Allow button on the permission prompt. Web push notifications are used by marketers to build, engage and retain their audience. Businesses across categories are increasingly relying on web push notifications as a solution to build and engage their audience. Online retailers and publishers now heavily use web push notifications as a communication channel to engage their audience. The primary reason for this adoption is also the plummeting performance of email, SMS and display ads. Some of the popular use cases are : • Delivering Sports updates and news right on user's lock screen • New Articles and content posted • Utility messages like traffic, weather and ski snow reports • Flight check in, change, and connection information • Sales Alerts, New Coupons, and Product updates 1.2 How web push notifications are different from app push notifications? • Native app notifications can take full advantage of the device features - the camera, GPS, accelerometer, compass, contact list, whereas web push notifications can’t tap into any of these features yet. • As Native apps can only be installed on tablets and smartphones, native app notifications are limited to these devices only. Web push notifications on the other hand can be used to reach users on Desktop as well. • Native app notifications support rich media - images, videos, gifs, audio, and other interactive elements. Web push notifications as of now, only support large images (only on Chrome 56 and above). 1.3 Where do these notifications appear on desktop and mobile Web push notifications are delivered even when the user is not on the website. On Desktop, these notifications are delivered to the browser, right next to the task bar. • Safari push notifications are delivered directly to the Mac OS Notification center. With Chrome 59, Chrome push notifications became native with OS X notification center. Firefox notifications appear on the right hand corner of the browser. • On Windows, these notifications are displayed above the task bar. Chrome 68 supports the native notification systems of the Windows 10 operating system. Notifications are directly delivered to Windows Action center • On Linux, web push notifications are displayed in the top right section of the browser. • On Android, these notifications are displayed in the notification tray. The user must be an active subscriber to receive these notifications. It is important to note that Apple is yet to support web push notifications on iOS. Check out this article to know more about iOS push notifications and stay up- to-date on the status of web push notifications on iOS. 2. How Do Web Push Notifications Work? Once you've enabled web push notifications on your website, your site visitors will start seeing a notification subscription prompt. You will be able to push notifications to this audience once they subscribe. They can subscribe by clicking on the "Allow Button". 2.1 Anatomy of a Web Push Notification Message There are 6 key elements that constitute a web push notification - Title, Description, Landing Page URL, Icon, Banner Image and Call To Action Buttons. You can also make use of emojis in push notifications to express yourself better. It is important to understand features of Web Push Notifications like Banner Image and Call To Action Buttons are only available for Chrome. Here is a breakdown of how each of these elements- 1. Website Domain: The website domain which has sent the notification. 2. Call to Action Buttons: You can add up to 2 CTA Buttons in a notification. CTA Buttons are only supported by Chrome. Firefox and Safari are yet to extend support to this. These buttons can be used to trigger different actions. For instance - taking the user to a landing page, sending out a social message (Tweet), triggering the Play Store or opening the dialler app. 3. Icon: You can add an icon to your notification to build a better recall. The default icon is bell icon. Users are nowadays bombarded with notifications, hence it becomes essential to let your users know when your push notification pops up. Adding your logo helps users in building a brand recall. The recommended icon should be 100*100px and should be less than 20kb in size. 4. Banner Image: Banner size images were introduced on notifications with Chrome 56. This was one of the most awaited features and rightly so - visuals help you amplify your message by as much 189%. While the copy of your notification should be eye catchy, adding a banner/large image contextual to your notification content will increase your chance of getting that click. Recommended Dimensions : 360*240px. Size of the banner image should be less than 240kb or less. Check out this notification preview guide to know more about how notification looks across different devices. 2.2 How exactly are push notifications delivered to the user's device? There are three actors involved with delivering a push notification, along with a fourth, optional, component for advanced functionality. 1. Push Notification Service: Each browser, including Chrome, Safari and Firefox have their own notification delivery service. Chrome uses Google Cloud Messaging ( and now Firebase Cloud Messaging ), Safari uses Apple Push Notification Service ( APNS ) and Firefox uses MDN servers. 2. Service Worker Registration: Developer must register the service worker on the browser. This is only for Chrome and Firefox. Safari while has added support for service-workers, Safari notifications are delivered using a different mechanism. 3. User’s Subscription ID: Subscriber ID is generated when a user opts in to receive notifications from a specific website. Additionally, an SDK (OS client library Software Development Kit) can be added to a web app for extended segmentation and analytics capabilities. 2.3 Enabling Web Push Notifications on a website 1. Website owners can start by implementing service workers for Chrome and Firefox browsers, and by generating APN certificate for Safari browsers. 2. Browsers provide standard API calls to read user subscription permissions for the domain and to prompt visitors for notification consents. 3. Website owners can additionally use service providers like iZooto and use their SDK to take care of the first two steps. 4. Website owners can push notifications to their subscribers by executing APIs provided by browser push system. This can also be done through UI. 2.4 User Subscription and Activation • Users are prompted for notification subscription whenever they visit the website with a default browser prompt. Developers and website owners can chose to trigger subscription prompts conditionally. Know more about changes in permission prompt for Chrome on Android in this article. • A unique registration key is generated by browser for every user who subscribes to notification. • Notification service provider stores the keys at their end along with any additional data points to identify subscribers uniquely. Web Push notifications can be targeted and personalised to select segments of your user base, and even personalized for specific users. As compared to email or SMS, in the context of web push, users are not required to do away with their personal information. Segmentation basis a user’s browsing and purchasing pattern ( events and properties ) can be used to create powerful audience segments. Marketers / developers would need an interface for writing messages, selecting the target audience and pushing or scheduling notifications. Publishers can build repeat traffic by leveraging web push notifications. They can build this infrastructure themselves, or leverage existing tools such as iZooto. Increasingly, web developers opt for iZooto for these services instead of building them, so that they can focus on building their web apps. Building and maintaining a cross-platform web push notification service is bound to consume significant resources and time. SaaS Platforms such as iZooto are best suited because: • Rich Analytics and Reporting • Real Time Push and Scheduling as per local time zone of user • End to End mobile marketing automation • Collection and segmentation of user data • Cross-platform support and regular updates 2.5 Sending a Notification Marketers follow a simple process and answer 3 simple questions before sending a notification - 1. What - Understanding the content that you want to send to your audience and making sure that the content is not only apt for this medium but also that you have right copy and creatives ready. 2. When - No one likes notifications delivered at 2 AM in the morning.