DiscoverWhat are push notifications, and how to use them on your WordPress site

The reason why you’re posting content and investing efforts to make it sound interesting is that you’re targeting a specific audience, which is probably how you understood quality comes only after you’ve captured people’s attention. The blogging world is more or less directed towards the same audience, and that makes it incredibly difficult to stand out of the crowd and be chosen.

The best practice to keep readers on board is to retain them with push notifications, thanks to which they will always know what your content is about. It would literally mean sending messages and notifications for people to see on their devices, in the shape of modest reminders that help your content be seen and appreciated.

The concept of push notifications was originally developed for mobile apps, but its immense success pushed it WordPress websites, where it is most widely applied.

In the WordPress scenario, you can trigger push notifications to inform contacts and subscribers of what is currently happening on your website and send messages concerning new posts. Some of those notifications can even appear on their device without them necessarily browsing the site.

Experienced website owners share numerous push notifications benefits, highlighting the one of staying connected to your audience regardless of their location or activities.

Using push notifications on WordPress websites works in the same way as a mailing list does: it contains the people you know are interested in your content, and it encourages those to come back and check what’s new.

The hint is that the person will be able to see them on every occasion, and won’t even have to open them to consider rechecking your website.

Setting up push notifications

The setup process is one of the simplest in WordPress optimization, mostly because it can be done with a single plugin. As usual, the market is overwhelmed by such plugins which all perform more or less the same functions.

The first thing is to choose and install an appropriate push notification plugin, and test your first-time visitors whether it actually delivers alerts in the right time and to the right people. If you see people are actually returning, you’ve found your perfect solution!

In most of the cases, push notifications will be popup messages that once clicked, lead to your website, and promote exactly the piece you want to push, though. Note that readers must have ‘opt out’ options from receiving your push notifications because you’re otherwise risking to overwhelm them and to appear too pushy.

The most useful push notifications plugins

Push notification plugins are categorized in many ways, but the best way to choose a good one is to look at the key features. Try answering the following questions before you’ve started:

Is the plugin compatible with all browsers and devices?
Do users have to download software in order to receive these notifications?
Does tagging content for push notifications happen smoothly?
Do you get to customize the notifications?
Can you use the plugin for analytic purposes?
Can you afford it?

 



 

PushUp Notifications is a specific plugin whose robust feature suite transfers notifications from WordPress websites to Apple devices (MAC OSX). Once installed, you can set it up quickly and with no effort, which makes it suitable even for beginners. There is only one opt-in form to fulfill, and a simple checkbox to select the posts which should be promoted.

PushCrew has its own website allegedly used by over 2,500 companies. The fact that there are currently more than 3,000 active installs of this plugin only confirms PushCrew has the credit to boast about popularity.

The process of using it, however, is more complicated: first, you’ll need to open an account and choose a plan that suits your needs. The plugin is mostly intended to serve enterprise-grade users, but individuals can also benefit from its free plan that sends notifications to 500 subscribers. Currently, the notifications are supported by Chrome and Firefox, and Safari is expected to jump in. Note that the free plan can only push notifications to local desktops – for a mobile device, you’ll have to switch to the premium one.

Chrome Push Notifications is another solid plugin you get to use for free, and which can send just as many notifications from your website as you need. The only limitation is that it works with no other browser than Chrome, and it lacks the extras we mentioned in some of the other cases. It is simple, to say at least.

Push Notifications for WordPress (Lite) is the right plugin for distributing notifications on mobile devices, covering Android, Fire, and iOS ones. The plugin is very fast and has an inbuilt hub for automated notifications which arrive in users’ devices without employing third-party servers for the purpose.

The alerts can be a new post or an older, popular one, or whatever else you think would retain random visitors and keep them engaged.

Push Notifications for WordPress (Lite) doesn’t only pay attention to functionality, but to beauty as well. You can build the most amazing apps ever without doing any back-end development work on your server, as content will be collected automatically, and there will be no need to do maintenance work.

The plugin is a great catch for mobile developers who wish to cut some of their work and simplify the process of embedding push notifications in their app. Now that they have this tool, there won’t be any push notifications hassle to worry about.

OneSignal represents an outstanding WordPress plugin that revolutionized the push notifications concept and transformed this service into an interesting and versatile experience. Thanks to it, you can send as many notifications as you need, and you can do so on literally every browser.

An impressive thing OneSignal does is to empower users to customize their push notifications and to send various types instead of only one. For instance, you can have push notifications for newly published content, or ones that remind users to check your content if it has been a while since they last did it. The plugin categories lead according to their status, usage frequency, location, and language.

Conclusion

Push notifications are amazing, but can be just as challenging. The problem wouldn’t be that serious if people were always willing to accept them, but for the matter, you have to target the right audience, and customize push notifications in the best way possible, and deliver an eye-pleasant popup users wouldn’t ignore.

Another challenge down the road is determining how many push notifications you need, trying to avoid sending them to the same people over and over. Users can easily become annoyed by a constant obstruction on their devices, sign off, and forget about the website in the worst scenario. This is why you need an analytically-enabled plugin to help you select and target the right audiences.

The strongest motive for using them is to increase traffic and click-through numbers, in particularly if you’re sending such that direct users to the site rather than a dedicated page.

Consider them as a powerful addition to your email newsletter, rather than its competitors. The role of these tools is completely different on the readers’ side, but the purpose is common for them: they need to motivate readers to return and ask for more content.

Technically speaking, push notifications are the bridge that leads random visitors to become regular subscribers, and once they’ve downloaded some of your free-to-use content, you can turn them into email subscribers as well.


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