Do you have push notification or notifications? I recently discovered the importance of where your notifications take you and what your notification says.

Over a month ago I got a request for a change in where notifications take in app. The user told me they did not like where app notification took them and they wanted me to change which screen opened when you press on a notification.

Notification prior to change

To make the user happy I agreed. I changed what screen opens when you press a notification. While I was there I also changed the text from piquing curiosity to directly giving complete information. I personally wanted the direct information. This was a 5 minute change and I forgot about it.

While writing the above article on increasing app retention engagement and growth I was looking at my app launch analytics and I discovered that launching from notifications had decreased by over 79%. I did some investigating and found out why. The decrease happened immediately after I made changes to notifications.

Why the drop?

I changed the notification message to not include ‘tap to play’. The new notification only included a word definition. With only the definition of a word there is no reason to open the app. It is not a question, it is providing a complete answer. I returned the push notification to include a call to action. After changing my notifications back my launch from notification count has returned to normal.

Badass picture of Picasso

Conclusion

Test what your notifications say and do. 79% is a large number. You may see an increase in app opens by 79% by experimenting. After this discovery I also had a look at some of my other analytics and discovered some other changes that had some negative effects. Keep a note of changes you make, and look at your analytics over a period of 2–4 weeks and see how your changes affect your app. For a comprehensive look at how to improve your push notifications check this article out.