Web Push Notifications For Ecommerce: Tips And Ideas

Web push notifications in ecommerce and retail have the lowest engagement rate among all other niches. On average, only 10% of consumers allow online stores to send clickable messages to their browsers. By contrast, the utility, and finance industry has a 4-fold higher subscription rate.

However, browser push notifications remain one of the effective conversion optimization tools for online retailers. We revealed within which ecommerce niches push perform better, what kind of messages are usually used, and how to create a clickable alert.

What is web push notification?

Push notification on the web is the small message that pops up on a desktop or mobile browser, aimed to interact with users when they have left your website. These notifications may contain images, text, and active buttons which users can click to return to your site. As against in-app push notifications, which can be automatically sent to users who installed the mobile app, web pushes require permission. This is the first touchpoint appeared under the address bar when a user visits your website.

Almost always, setting up push notifications is available with the email marketing service you use. However, there are various other platforms such as OneSignal, PushWoosh, Mixpanel, or Catapush with plugins for WordPress and which you can test for free.

Types of browser push notifications for eCommerce

Substantially, there are two types of push notifications: general and personalised. These depend on a token you choose.

In the first case, all subscribers (i.e. users who allowed notifications) will receive the same, usually informative messages:

• Welcome
• Promotional (new products, sale, etc.)
• FYI (For your information) (new arrivals, blog post, etc.)

Personalised notifications are sent in accordance with user behaviour, interests, or location. Commonly, this depends on a specific assigned tag a group of customers from the CRM acquired being on your website. Like in email marketing, customer base segmentation is a perfect solution to provide your clients with relevant offers and consequently increase conversions. Types of tailored pushes:

• Reminder (Abandoned cart)
• Interest-Based (15% off on all items in the category you viewed)
• Geolocation Based (Special offers in the nearest store)
• Time-bound (an hour 10% discount on items in your shopping cart)
• Delivery Notifications

In what eCommerce niches push notifications perform best

Unlike other digital marketing tools, push notifications don’t just need, but require to be tested on your site. Since these may work perfect for one online store, and be absolutely ineffective for another. For instance, our in-house email marketing specialist Nikita Gontar revealed that performance of push notifications deliver excellent results on marketplaces, consumer electronics, and fashion stores. Browser messages are also efficient for food delivery services; moreover, their engagement rate may be by 2.5 times higher than on e-stores.

How to create an efficient browser push notifications for eCommerce site

• Insert your logo in the message  

Not so many people subscribe to browser notifications, but those who do may be matted from which website they received an alert. Website icon here is a common courtesy.

• Don’t use large images

Unlike on entertainment and deal sites, large images on ecommerce pages demonstrate poor results, even more, they negatively affect on CTR.

• Choose a clear CTA

First of all, a call to action button is the second zone a user pays attention to right after the headline. To encourage users to read your text content and understand where they will be redirected clicking the CTA, use a comprehensible short phrase, offer them ready solutions.

• Keep to the point

Describe your proposal precisely, respect your customers’ time. Different services have their own character limits — 40-120, but even there try to avoid useless introduction in the text content. For instance, the alert “Did anything surprise you today? If nothing, we will do it right now. Get your 15% OFF on all sneakers” more than likely will have a lower CTR than a simple “Get your 15% OFF on all sneakers”.

• Apply scarcity and urgency tactics

In 1996, an American venture capitalist  Patrick J. McGinnis devised the term FOMO which means the social ‘Fear of missing out’, and presented this in his op-ed in the magazine of Harvard Business School. Generally, this is a desire of people to stay connected with others are doing. Lack of time or products can encourage them to complete an impulsive purchase. That is why saying something as ‘Today only flash deal’ may increase not only an open rate of your push alert but your conversion rate as well.

• Reinforce your message with social proofs

People tend to copy the actions of others, as was said above. Thence another solution for increasing CTR is to include ostentatious numbers in your notification. For instance, “This product received over 100 positive reviews per week. Check it out‘

• Use emojis

Emojis is a language everyone understands and uses in messages. Using digital faces and icons in the web push alerts may increase your open rate by 120%.

• Optimise frequency

Preparing the article, I found various opinions on how often an online store should send push messages. Some say the more, the better (3-4 a day),  others maintain that 5 times a month is enough. According to the experience of our Promodo in-house experts, the conversion rate on sites sending 10 push notifications per month and those, which send 30, will be the same. Anyway, track your statistics to decide which option suits your business best.

• Choose the proper time

According to the worldwide statistics, the most relevant time for notifications is 4 PM, every day but Monday. However, do not forget about the timezone your customers are in.

How to track performance of push notifications

There are two key performance indicators an ecommerce business should track when launching a web push notification campaign — CTR and conversion rate. On average, the open rate of alerts is 50% than for emails. But consider, that conversion rate is on average 6 times lower.

To monitor the performance in Google Analytics or another service, you should tag message links with the proper UTM parameters.

Remember, the average LTV of a token is 21 days (every notification service has its own), which means that your messages will be sent to a subscriber during this period only.‍

Last thoughts

I wouldn’t state that pushing alerts on a browser is a panacea for your business, especially if you have very strong brand loyalty. But this is an excellent solution to engage with your customers and make them come up with your brand first when they need to buy something your store offers. Push notifications is a cost- and time-consuming digital marketing tool, so do not hesitate to test it on your ecommerce website and contact our Promodo email marketing team who has a huge experience and successful cases here.

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