Web Push Notifications Best Practices for eCommerce

In an ideal world, everyone who visits your eCommerce site will complete a goal or make a purchase. Unfortunately, that’s not the world we live in.

According to previous research, about 98% of users will exit your eCommerce site where you don’t want them to. You need to identify a way to get those users back to your site.

And web push notifications are a great way to do that. They can help businesses like yours to reach out to prospective customers, engage them, and drive on-site conversions. Companies in the past have seen a 30% increase in their CTR using this method of communication.

For your eCommerce business, winning back customers who left your site without purchasing should be a priority. If the user is looking elsewhere, without intervention there’s a slim chance they’ll come back. 

With web push notifications you give yourself more than a fighting chance to win back those potential customers. 

But it’s important that these notifications are well thought out and that you have a process in place for them. There are particular approaches to take that ensure your campaigns are as optimised and highly effective as possible.

Here, we’ll go through some best practices to ensure that your web push campaigns get the results you want.

Best Practices

Building a web push campaign isn’t enough to turn your sales around. You need to optimise your campaigns to drive customers back to your site to convert.

Opting-in

Web push is a permission-based marketing channel. Before your users can receive any of your web pushes, they first have to opt into them.

But, users won’t opt-in just because you ask them to. You need to give them a good reason to. We know what the value is for you and your business, but what about the user who’s opting in?

The value add needs to be more compelling than “Would you like to receive notifications?”. That won’t get you anywhere. Instead, talk about what your customers care about. Discounts, promotions, loyalty rewards and exclusive prices are all great ways to engage with your users.

Once you send your customised message, make sure that it is easy to opt-in. A simple yes or no option is ideal.

Personalise Your Messages

Personalisation is the key to success in any customer engagement campaign. Customers expect more than generic communications that make them feel like you only want their money, rather than their custom. Sending generic campaigns in the modern digital landscape won’t work..

The same goes for your push notifications. Any message sent to your customer should be relevant to them. Use their name. Show them something they want to see. You could start to see an ROI of up to 2200% if you spend some time on them.

Segmentation

No two customers are the same. Your communications need to reflect your customers’ unique needs and wants and what brought them to your eCommerce site.

You need to use your data to segment customers into different groups, depending on their wants from your site. That way, you can target these customers with relevant content or offers according to their previous behaviour.

Offering some customers a discount for shoes will yield far greater results than offering everyone an offer for hats.

Use Rich Media

Using rich media in your notifications will lead to a higher level of engagement, increasing open rates by as much as 56%. Messages that include an image generally perform better than plain text.

Including images, videos, and GIFs makes your notification far more eye-catching and more compelling. This can be especially beneficial to eCommerce businesses that want to engage with their audience on a deeper level.

By using rich media to display products as part of a cart abandonment campaign you can tempt customers back. Relevance is essential to engaging with your customers if you want them to return to your site and complete their purchases.

Keep it Short and Sweet

Remember, you’re not the only one sending notifications. People receive countless messages and notifications from businesses every day. It’s important to cut through the noise. No one wants to see an essay pop up on their screen. Your web push notifications should be snappy, exciting and add value. This will lead to a much higher CTR.

Ideally, your notification should only include about 5 to 8 words in length. It may not always be possible, but this gives you the best chance of engaging your audience.

Use precise CTA’s

A particularly good way of boosting your CTRs is to include a call to action. Notifications with a clear, precise CTA perform better than ones that don’t include them.

Users consume a large amount of content per day. A lot of the time they will need to be prompted to take action and click through your particular piece of content or notification. It also gives a specific goal to complete.

Some examples of CTAs that perform well are:

• Buy now
• Take me there
• Read now
• I want a discount 
• Download now
• Claim my free trial
• Subscribe

Timing

Timing is everything, especially when you’re trying to boost your notification success rate. Low CTRs can often be attributed to poor timing of your notification. Sending a notification at 2am is pretty unlikely to perform as well as 2pm the previous afternoon.

Remember to segment your audience by time zone. No one likes their phone buzzing late at night or early in the morning. It’s annoying and they may dismiss your notification. Identifying time zones means that you can send your web push campaigns at optimal times. Ensuring that they will be seen by the receiver. 

There are also different times of the day when activity is at its highest. Using your website data, you will be able to identify this amongst your targeted audience. Understanding this period of high activity among users and taking advantage of it will lead to higher CTRs.

Always A/B Test

It’s vital that you understand what works and what doesn’t work for your customers. This is why using a/b testing is so important. It’s always good to have 2 or 3 variations of the content you want to push out. This is so we can tell what worked and use it more in future.

It’s also important to try out new things. It’s all too easy to stick with what you know as testing something new can feel like a risk. This can lead to unknowingly sabotaging your campaigns. Testing is essential to understanding your customers better. Images, videos, new language, and many other things can be tested. You never know, you may stumble on a piece of gold.

Instill a Sense of Urgency

Humans will always respond quickly if there is a sense of urgency. Fear of missing out is real so take advantage of it, it could work wonders for your campaigns. A time-sensitive sale, offer, or product availability will lead to higher click through rates. 

You should include this sense of urgency in your notification titles. Here are some examples:

• This offer ends today!
• Time is almost up!
• Your voucher is almost out of date!
• This product is low on stock!

If a user thinks they might miss out on something, they are much more likely to respond.

Takeaways

Do remember, there is no one size fits all rule when it comes to eCommerce push notifications. What works for you at a particular time may not work the next time you do it. The main thing is to constantly test your campaigns and make sure they are personalised for each customer. 

Creating the perfect campaign for your customers is a difficult task. There is no doubting that. But keeping these practices in mind will certainly put you on the right track.