How can you use web push notifications to increase your website traffic?

Web push notifications can be an effective way to increase website traffic by engaging your audience. Here's how you can use them: ? Ask for Permission: Encourage visitors to subscribe when they first visit your site. ? Offer Value: Provide valuable content or incentives to keep subscribers engaged. ? Segment Your Audience: Send personalized notifications. ? Clear Language: Use persuasive language and a strong call to action. ? Mobile-Friendly: Ensure they are mobile-friendly. ? Track Performance: Monitor and adjust your strategy. ? Optimize Frequency: Avoid over-sending notifications. ? Provide Opt-Out: Make it easy to unsubscribe. Remember, it's about engaging your audience with relevant and appealing content.

Choosing a web push service requires evaluating your needs and budget. Consider OneSignal for a user-friendly interface and a generous free tier, PushEngage for advanced segmentation and automation, or Firebase for deep integration with Google's ecosystem. Look for features like analytics, A/B testing, and API access. Ensure the service supports all platforms your audience uses and complies with data privacy laws. Always test the service and read reviews to gauge its effectiveness for businesses similar to yours.

The purpose of using web push notifications is so you can re-engage your visitors and keep them coming back. What you want to do is, ensure that your notification content is compelling, relevant, and provides value, not spam. Use messages based on user behavior, preferences, and their interaction with your site. For example, you could notify subscribers about just-published content tied to their interests or new promotions if they abandoned their cart. Be strategic about timing and personalization. Avoid overload. If done thoughtfully, web push notifications allow you to effectively remind people about your site and bring them back, thus significantly increasing traffic and conversions!

Crafting catchy messages for web push notifications is crucial for engaging subscribers. Use clear, concise language that highlights the value and urgency of your offer. Incorporate relevant visuals like images, icons, or emojis to grab attention. It's essential to maintain trust by avoiding spammy or misleading content that could lead to unsubscribes or harm your brand's reputation. Always aim for messages that resonate with your audience's interests and needs, prompting them to take action.

You can go the catchy route, but it's better to be clear and upfront about the value you're offering people. Too many emojis, funny phrases, puns, etc can confuse your audience and make it hard for them to glean the value that THEY will get from your offer or messaging. So, your best bet is to focus on relevancy—what will actually matter to your audience most, and what do they actually need? And remember, context is everything, too. Emojis are fun, but if they don't add to your messaging, they're ultimately detracting from it. The key is to get your audience to take action, so you've got to focus on what the action is, and the most resonant way to get them to take that desired action. That's through value, context, and relevancy.

Segmentation is key in delivering relevant and personalized web push notifications. By categorizing your audience based on specific criteria like interests, behavior, or location, you can tailor your messages to match their preferences, which significantly boosts engagement and click-through rates. Utilize the data from your web push service and website analytics to refine your segmentation strategy. Personalized notifications are more likely to drive traffic as they speak directly to the user's needs and interests.

You want to use messages based on user behavior, preferences, and their interaction with your site. So incorporating segmentation is the best way to send relevant content to your visitors. It will make it a lot easier to personalize each message that goes out.

Depending on your goals, audience, product, and context, how you segment will matter (heavily). Beyond the typical segmentation of location, industry, or interests, hone in on behaviours, signals, and historical triggers. What's pushed someone (no pun intended) to take action in the past? Who are you trying to reach—and what matters most to them? Think about the firmographics of segmentation, and not just generic targeting. Titles, use cases, behaviours, intent signals, purchasing history, past activation scores, etc all matter and can help you better segment.

Timing is everything with web push notifications. Schedule them when subscribers are most active to ensure higher visibility and engagement. Avoid bombarding users with too many notifications to prevent opt-outs, and don't send them too infrequently, or your audience might forget about you. Consider time zones and user habits—analytics can show when your audience is online. Test various schedules to determine the best times for engagement. Use your web push service's scheduling tools to automate this process efficiently.

Tracking and measuring the performance of your web push notifications is crucial to understand their impact on website traffic and user engagement. Utilize the analytics provided by your web push service to monitor key metrics such as click-through rates, engagement times, and conversion rates. Compare the effectiveness of different messages, audience segments, delivery times, and frequency to refine your strategy. Continuous analysis helps in identifying what resonates best with your audience, allowing you to optimize future notifications for better results.

Lots of folks will tell you to look at the top-of-funnel data, so you can and should track things like engagement, opt-outs, CTRs, and (ultimately) CVR. But keep in mind, push notifications are just one tactic that impacts your audience's journey as customers—so, it's important to also look at how audiences engage with different messaging, offers, and incentives, and how this engagement coincides with other tactics and channels you use to engage these folks. Don't measure and track push notifications in a silo ;)

While you can (and should) experiment with optimizing your push notification strategy, it's good to keep in mind that you can be data-informed, without dying on the hill of being data-driven. This essentially means looking at the elements of your strategy (messaging, segmentation and targeting, offers, CTAs, timing and frequency, etc) and testing what people engage with most, what drives the most conversions, and how people ultimately respond to your notifications. However, don't lose sight of how you'll use this data to inform future iterations of your strategy. People change, their buying habits and preferences change, and ultimately, you want to use these results as sentiment feedback, not a copy-and-paste set of data.

Consider this: how will you use the data and insights you gather from your push campaigns to inform your approach to other channels, and vice versa? Don't fall into the trap of treating push notifications as independent or silo'd from other channels and mediums you use to engage with folks.