7 Overrated Factors of Web Push Notifications

Web push notifications: View the other side of the coin 

Web push notifications have all the right points in their favour. But what if the factors that work in support of the push notifications turn against you. What if the benefits you are procuring from them turn your world upside down. It could be a nightmare, but let’s watch out the hardcore reality behind the pop-up notifications. Read this blog to know the overrated factors of web push.

Like many unwanted ads and messages, push notifications can too appear the same to your audience if you do not take care of specific guidelines while creating them. Then how shall the marketers raise their voices amidst the noise of unwanted messages and how can they ask for user’s permission when the user has a rigid perspective about these pop-ups. 

Acquire the opt-ins 

Websites have to gain the consent of the users to show them push messages. But acquiring an opt-in is not as easy as asking a simple question in a survey. Although these push messages have a legitimate purpose behind them, some are still lingering in the queue of pop-ups which users found unwanted.

That means you must use the web push notifications depending upon your business requirements. For example – A cab company like uber needs to interact with the users at the right time to give a satisfying customer experience. They shall not avoid the use of push notifications as it is quite relevant to provide timely updates and alerts to the users.

But you can avoid it if you are promoting your products and brands. Let us see the reasons why you must avoid them for brand promotion in the next section of the blog.

What are the reasons you must avoid push notifications for brand promotion :

1. Opt-ins can cause psychologic resistance:

You might be thinking opt-ins are an easy way to ask customers to click on the “allow” button. The opt-in boxes are created in such a way which can resist the customers right away. Many marketers create a deception to persuade the users to click on the “allow” button, which intuitively resists the customers as their privacy threatens to some extent.

2. Pushing the attention limits:

According to the famous psychologist, Daniel, attention is a limited resource. Unexpected messages during the browsing session evoke a feeling of anger and frustration amongst the users. You might have often seen such situations in a driver and passenger argument over directions. Messages that appear in an unexpected location creates such provocative responses.

3. Push notifications can harm your brand:

In any case, you are promoting your brand to the customers, and you begin with sending them the opt-in forms which can create a negative perception about your brands. They can act defensively. Also, it creates a sort of suspicion in the user’s mind. Simultaneously the direct messages related to your brand can deteriorate your brand value if you send them in bulk.

What are the other overrated factors about web push notifications :

The web push notifications deliver in real-time to a user’s device, tablet or mobile devices.

When a visitor subscribes to the web push notification, he starts receiving the push alerts. However, the reachability of these notifications are higher, and subscribers receive them whenever they are online before the notification expires. 

But sometimes there are issues with the reachability of push notifications, irrespective of the service provider. These could be some of the reachability issues you can face :

Permission denied from the notification centre:

You might be thinking that web push notifications would be much more comfortable and safer to send to the users as users’ privacy is in full control. But if you look at the other side of the coin, if subscribers turn off the notifications settings, they will not be able to receive the web push notifications. Therefore these subscribers will be rated as unsubscribed users. So, you can calculate the view rate by subtracting the unsubscribed subscribers from the total sent subscribers. 

Note: Your subscriber can turn off the notifications from the website and browser.

2. Old subscribers may face reachability issues:

FCM is responsible for sending the push notifications to the browsers like chrome which then deliver the push notifications to the different browsers. Suppose if a user has unsubscribed from the push notifications by blocking them from the browser settings or if the user has not used it for a long time, he will be marked as unsubscribed. But this unsubscription must be informed to the cloud managers. In case the information is not updated, the subscribers won’t be marked as unsubscribed. In such a delayed situation, the messages will get a valid message-id, but the client app will not receive it. The unsubscription process takes time; it could be 2 or 3 months.

3. Battery saver mode:

The deliverability of the notifications will still hamper if the subscribers have turned on the battery saver mode in their mobiles or devices. It Kills the apps which are running in the background. The user will not receive the notification in such cases even though users have their internet settings on. Due to the “force stop” settings, notifications won’t reach the users.

4. Subscribing through many profiles:

There may be many subscribers who might have subscribed from many profiles. If he uses only one profile, he will get notifications only one profile. If he has opened a profile in the browser form a long time, then Cloud messengers will drop the subscription. Due to the extended unavailability, he will stop receiving the notifications.

5. Notification tray storage:

In case the notification tray is full, the subscribers won’t be able to receive the notifications on their mobile devices. Simultaneously, the windows notification tray has the limits; if it is full, the notification will drop in the meanwhile.

6. Clearing the site data:

When the user removes the site data, the service worker.js file automatically uninstalls, which plays a vital role in sending and viewing the notifications. The user will not receive the notification in that case.

7. Notification expiry:

If you have set the expiry for the notifications and users are not online for a few days, there are higher chances that they will not receive them.

CONCLUSION

By now, you must have seen some unravelled sides of push notifications also. Explore the right sides as well as the problematic sides of your push notification strategy.

Read more:

• An Elaborative Guide on Push Notifications
• 5 Preparations You Should Make Before Using Push Notification
• 15 Best Push Notification Software & Tools in 2022 {Compared}
• How Web Push Notifications are Effective Than Other Marketing Mediums?