The most important reason that causes people to delete mobile apps is annoying push notifications.

The little bits of information popping up the whole day that no one pays attention to.

But there is an easy way to turn this anti-UX pattern into something useful and valuable for you and your user. You just have to pay attention to some important rules.

Push notifications get you the direct attention of your user. If you design your push notifications great and send them in the right moment to the right target group they are a valuable tool.

71% of the user uninstall apps because of annoying push notifications — this means there is definitely a misunderstanding between the designer of the notifications and the user. So before you start to design your push notifications you have to learn:

what exactly your messages is

how you should use them and

who your target group is

What is a Push Notification?

A push notification is a text message which is sent by an app on your smartphone. There are push notifications on desktops sent by web browser too, but this article focuses on mobile apps.

Push notification can be sent because of several reasons. Some of them are the following:

Highlights in the app, e.g. coupons, news

Important information

Reminders

A new activity, e.g. from friends who use the same app

Before you send a push notification you should ask yourself two questions:

Would I want to get this notification in the given situation?

Would I send this notification to someone I care about?

Different types of Push Notifications

Push notification can be classified into four different categories:

Banners: Appear for a short time on the screen and disappear after

Appear for a short time on the screen and disappear after Badges: Small (mostly) red circles you can find on the corner of the belonging app

Small (mostly) red circles you can find on the corner of the belonging app Alerts: Messages that pop up on the screen and require an action from the user to open or close them

Messages that pop up on the screen and require an action from the user to open or close them Sounds: Mostly combined with other types of notifications or sometimes without a visible notification

Get the Opt-in

Before you can send your customer push notification you need the permission.

There is a default request which asks the user for permission. This request says literally nothing about you, your app or the reason why the user should give you permission.

It’s better to create your own attractive screen before asking for permission. Let the user know about the importance and the value of your push notifications. Make them feel good about this decision. From this screen, you can lead him to the official text. Your chances to get a positive feedback will definitely increase.

Furthermore, you should try to find the right moment to ask your user for permission. If you ask him directly while opening the app the first time he might not know what you can offer him and won’t give you the permission.

What to say?

Use your words wisely!

You have about 10 words to write down what you want to tell your user. You have to make him interested and motivated to react to your notification and to make an impact. You have to add a call to action like “slide for more information”, “have a look”, “share” or “read more”.

So you have to create a short, motivating, precise and brief notification. With taking the 10 words rule in mind, you should make sure that your text is completely readable on the push notification.

Personalization

Personalized push notifications are 4 times more likely to be opened then not personalized push notifications.

Being friendly and kind is not enough. Let the user feel as if it’s a message just for him. Let him feel that you are interested in HIM and that you address exactly him. Don’t let the message look as if it’s for everybody.

You are wondering how you can personalize your push notifications? You don’t have time to send special messages to everybody? This is actually not what you should do!

Just try to personalize the messages based on the user journey. Put your users into groups or segments and create special messages for every segment. Think about a gaming app, here you can send special messages to the user depending on the level they are in at the moment.

Moreover, you can use transactional push notifications. Behaviorally push notifications are 9 times more likely to be opened then normal push notifications. There are notifications which will just be sent to one single user, so they are perfectly personalized. Examples for this notifications could be special happenings in the users' account, e.g. a not completed purchase or a shipped package.

If you want to have more general information about personalization and customization, this article about App Personalization and why you should think about it will be interesting for you.

Target page

When your user opens the push notification you should lead him to the right page or the right part of your app. Your user will probably be annoyed when the notification just opens the app or opens a page which is not related to the notification. He won’t like it or be annoyed if he has to search the right part of the app.

When to send a push notification?

Definitely NOT when the user is sleeping. First, they will be annoyed if they haven’t set their smartphone in not-disturbing-mode. Second, most of the users don’t read all the push notifications they get during the night.

Moreover, you have to look at the local time zone the user lives in. The app user peak is about 8 pm. It’s the best to use the timeslot from 6 pm to 10 pm for your important push notifications to be seen by the user directly.

Urgent information

There is one exception concerning the time to send a push notification and urgent notifications. If something very important happens during the night, they don’t want to know this the next evening. But make sure that information you call urgent is considered to be urgent for your user too.

Take in mind that notifications should be sent during the day or in the evening. And important notifications (10% off coupons are not an urgency) whenever they are important. Furthermore, care about the timezone of your users.

How many notifications are okay?

This depends on which kind of app you have and which content you provide.

If you want to inform users about new products in your shop, you should set a limit per day. If you spam your users, they will be annoyed and delete your app.

On the other side, imagine how you would feel when a messaging app would have a limit of 5 push notifications per day. If you write a lot with other people or get many messages you probably want to get informed about every message you get.

Try to imagine how important the notifications are and how important it is that your user sees this on his start screen.

Don’t send unimportant notifications

Your user gets no value if you offer him a flight to London that he already booked hours or days ago. He’ll feel as if you send this messages randomly or don’t care about him at all.

It would be better if you offer him a hotel in London now, but don’t offer him stuff that he has bought right before. Furthermore, it would be a better idea to send him possibly flights when he does research for this flight or after the booking a coupon for his next one.

Duplicate notifications inside the app

This might sound strange but this will help your users. If a user opens the push notification he might have not read the complete text. If he wants to know what you wanted to tell him or what exactly you have written he has no chance to read the text again unless you give him the chance.

Give the user the chance to re-read the push notification you send him.

Clear the Badge

There is nothing more annoying getting a push notification you haven’t opened yet and there is a red circle on the corner of one of your apps.

There are many users who don’t like to have unopened badges. Give them the chance to clear their badges by opening your app.

Don’t let them tap around your app to find the right screen which lets the badge disappear. You won’t get your user to read the content you provide him, even if you let him tap around till he has opened the right page. It’s the opposite.

Test your push notification

A simple way to find out if your created push notification fits the needs of your target group is testing. You can just test your push notification or you can make an A/B test. You send two different versions of your notification to a segment your users and watch which version generates more revenue.

This can help you to find the most effective version of your notification. Moreover, it prevents you to send a lot of notifications which generate no or just a very small revenue.

Don’t limit yourself to push notifications!

Push notifications are just one way to get in touch with your user. There are more ways you can try out. Select your notification way based on the urgency of the information and the target group.