As technology has progressed, business and marketing tools have been forced to adapt. Today, hundreds of digital tools are available for nearly every industry and business need. With consumers demanding rapid service, marketers and developers have learned to use instant, real-time forms of communication to connect with their audience.
The need to communicate in real-time is one of the many reasons marketers are utilizing push notifications. Many believe push notifications are primarily a mobile app feature, but push notifications can also be used with web apps through a browser. As a result, businesses are starting to realize that web app notifications are just as beneficial as mobile. In this article, we’ll explain what web app notifications are and review the top nine benefits to your business.
What Are Web App Notifications?
Let’s start by defining what a web app is. A web app is an application software stored on a remote server and accessed through a web browser over the internet. Mobile apps require users to download the application from an app store before it can be used. With web apps, you can use the software directly from a web browser without needing to download the application.
Popular brands like YouTube, Twitter, and Slack are great examples of companies with web apps. Consumers can go to YouTube’s website and have nearly (if not all) the same interactions with the application without downloading anything. Web apps aren’t exclusive to desktops either. You can access web apps using a browser on any device connected to the internet.
Web app notifications are push messages sent to users’ devices (mobile or desktop). These short and sweet messages appear as an alert notifying users of essential and sometimes time-sensitive information like special promotions or events. Web app notifications sent to a mobile device act similar to any other notification and will appear in the same fashion. Where notifications appear on the browser will depend on the computer’s operating system. Usually, they will pop up in one of the corners on the right-hand side.
Web apps are often a less expensive tool that allows users to enjoy native ‘app-like’ features on your website. This, combined with the ability to automate and segment personalized messages, makes web apps an ideal tool for growing your business. Here’s a list of the top nine benefits of web app notifications.
1. Increase Web Traffic with Ease
One of the main advantages of web app notifications is the ability to increase your web traffic but not your workload. Automated web app notifications allow you to easily reach your audience even if they are not actively using your website.
For instance, if a user has opted in to receive notifications from you, you can reach them via browser, desktop, or mobile alerts any time they are active on their browser. The key here is that they do not have to be on your website or using your application to receive the push message.
Sending web app notifications can lead users back to your website when they would not have otherwise. This sweet feature is a massive advantage for increasing web traffic that other marketing channels don’t offer.
2. Hook Top of the Funnel Users
Grab the attention of more casual browsers with concise, one-click web app notifications. You’ll attract the top-of-the-funnel users with easy-to-use push messages that don’t require downloading something or entering information like their email address.
Once users opt-in, you can keep the momentum going with more personalized, segmented messages to lead them down the funnel.
3. Messaging That’s Easy to Create
Web push messages are meant to be brief and to the point. Most push messages use 40 characters or less, keeping them short and simple. Compare that to emails that need to be curated with crafty subject lines, strong visuals, and quality copywriting.
Web app notifications can be created and sent quickly without needing a professional copywriter. Spending less time creating content frees up your creative teams’ time for more worthwhile projects and quickly gets information into your audience's hands.
4. Send Messages Beyond Emails
Email marketing is still a valuable tool for engaging with your audience. However, many consumers are privy to how email marketing works, making obtaining legitimate email info challenging. Thankfully, it’s not the only tool in the shed.
With web apps, you don’t need to collect an email address to communicate with your audience. Web app notifications remove the need for collecting email addresses, creating more opportunities to communicate with casual website visitors.
5. Create Ongoing Connections
Every website serves a primary purpose — acquiring leads and conversions.
Sure, websites do other things like inform, but the overarching goal is to persuade consumers to become customers. To do this, you have to build a connection. Web notifications provide a platform to create an ongoing connection with your audience. Once the connection is established, you can personalize messages to build a long-lasting relationship.
6. Accelerate Conversion
Converting consumers is no easy feat. With saturated markets, a competitor is waiting around every corner. Web app notifications accelerate the conversion process by leading the consumer down the funnel with targeted messaging.
Push notifications can increase engagement by 80% or more, with greater engagement leading to increased sales. In one study, 48% of users made a purchase after receiving a personalized push notification. Web push notifications can also see 20% or higher click-through rates compared to the average 3% from email, proving push notifications to be a more reliable conversion tool.
7. Easily Managed
Managing your web browser notifications doesn't have to be complicated and using a third-party service provider will get you set you up in no time. Once set up, you'll be able to enable push notification permissions on your site and schedule messaging across all of your channels. Alerts are triggered by external scripts that deliver the message to a user's device connected to the internet.
You'll still need a team to analyze data for creating targeted content and schedule messaging, but these bite-sized messages shouldn’t take up too much of your time.
8. All Real Data
As we mentioned above, with web app notifications, no information is needed from the visitor to opt-in. They can enable notifications with one click, thereby eliminating fake or inactive emails.
Beyond that, with web app notifications, whichever browser the visitor uses will work as a buffer between you and the visitor. If your visitor is using Google Chrome, Chrome will act as the channel for receiving messages on behalf of the visitor. Since the user does not have the option to choose what information is shared, you can rest easy knowing the data will be accurate.
9. Reach Your Audience Wherever They Are
Discovering the best place to reach your audience is a challenge many marketers face. Web app notifications reduce hours of research by reaching your audience in real-time. Smart notification systems utilize data to track the time of day and which devices users are most active. You'll be able to communicate on their time, in real-time, on the device they prefer.
Web push notifications are easy to deploy and can be enabled on any device with access to the internet and a web browser. The accessibility of web notifications permits you priority access to your audience wherever they are, on nearly any device.
No Message Left Behind
Web app notifications are an excellent tool for marketing teams to keep in their toolbox, but despite the many benefits, there are still some challenges that remain. Most push notification systems are designed to receive messages where the user is most active or recently active. This smart design helps limit how many messages users receive across devices and prevents alert overload.
But what happens when alerts are pushed to a device that is suddenly inactive? Consumers are able to easily switch between different devices, leaving an opportunity for missed notifications. Unfortunately, systems can lag at detecting when a device has become inactive, especially if a user frequently alternates between devices or browsers.
When this happens, your audience will miss out on time-sensitive promotions, and your business will miss out on the benefits listed above. You can ensure this doesn’t happen by using an integrated notification inbox. MagicBell has a ‘no message left behind’ solution that allows all notifications to collate in one place, whether the notifications are sent to the web app, mobile app, or desktop.
MagicBell’s solutions can integrate with your applications in mere minutes, ensuring your audience and business will never miss another message and allowing developers and users alike to reap the benefits.