Did you ever get one of those Happy Birthday postcards in the mail from your dentist, or your real estate agent, or anyone who only “remembered” your birthday as a marketing tactic?
That’s kinda’ how your web push notifications can start to feel to your users if you’re sending them too often.
In an age where everybody gets “ghosted” on the text, “thinned-out” from the friends list, and completely forgotten about in total obscurity (why isn’t anyone commenting on my latest Xanga post?) it’s hard to imagine how it is even possible to intend to gain someone’s attention and then intentionally hold someone’s interest, when it seems as if we’re all just so busy and frazzled that returning a text or a phone call to someone you call a “friend”
So today you’re going to learn how to treat your website’s visitors like they’re your friends.
Not like they’re your cattle for the prodding (and milking!)
Even when you really like someone, completely admire them, and enjoy talking with them, you know better than to call them whenever you want as often you want to talk about whatever YOU want to talk about … don’t you ?
If you don’t, well, that’s a thing, yeah. Most grownups understand that even people who love you more than they love life itself sometimes have their own thing going on. Most people have interests or concerns that are theirs alone, unique to them only and not interesting or important to anyone else they talk to…
Yet the compulsion to talk about what’s on your mind is the most human thing about us, other than the thumbs and the bipedalism there isn’t a whole lot that sets us apart from the rest of the animals.
We walk on our hind legs, we grasp onto things pretty well, we’re pretty good at it … and we talk.
Rather, we grasp abstract ideas in the front of our plump brains and we express ideas and communicate with one another — and even talk to animals sometimes even though they can never one two three four, declare a thumb-war … nor can they tie shoelaces … but it’s fine because they have paws and hooves. They don’t wear shoes.
Horses do.
Okay well horses talk, too, so what is my whole point here anyway?
If you’re wondering how to get started with using web push notifications, here’s the essential info.
Use the service and go implement web push notifications right way.
And if you’ve already got your push system in place, but you haven’t started collecting analytics data and tracking your KPI’s yet, don’t wait ‘til you get to step #5 to get started on that.
Remember, any time someone agrees to accept your site’s web push notifications they’re extending to you a certain degree of trust that you won’t abuse the power you’re being granted.
Once a visitor clicks or taps to accept notifications from you, they’ve given you the ability to digitally tap them on the shoulder any time of day or night and bug ‘em about anything you wanna bug ‘em about.
With that power comes the responsibility to not irritate, annoy, or aggravate users with a sudden influx of irrelevant interruptions. There’s no golden rule to how often you should send push notifications, so you should monitor your campaigns and learn what frequency works best for your audience.
Spamming your audience every time your site adds new content may work somewhat sometimes with some people, but odds are you’re turning off a much larger segment of your audience than the ones clicking through to return to your domain.
Just be sure to send messages that are as beneficial to the user as they might be for yourself.
Providing value and offering solutions is what drives online commerce, so if you’re not genuinely trying to provide helpful content for your users’ benefit, there’s no need to be pushy.
The less often you see push notifications from the same site, the more interested you’ll be when you occasionally DO receive them, right? It’s just like dating, basically. Don’t seem overeager, and work on yourself before reaching out to connect with someone else.
Provide scarcity of your presence in order to maintain visitors’ interest & consumer demand.
It’s only natural to become gradually blind and numb to an excessive repetition of similar stimuli, remember to bear in mind that for most sites, less is more.