5 Examples of Highly Effective Browser Notifications

Permission-based marketing, such as push messages, can be a powerful tool for engaging with your consumers and increasing conversion rates. If you’ve only been using mobile app notifications, you may be unintentionally excluding part of your audience. This article will guide you through what browser notifications are and provide five highly effective examples to incorporate into your marketing strategy.

What Is a Browser Notification?

Browser notifications, also known as web notifications, web push notifications, or web push messages, are short alert-style messages sent via a desktop or mobile web browser. Businesses use these messages to communicate with their audience, increase web traffic, and drive conversions.

Browser notifications typically provide concise information on promotions, reminders, products, etc. These notifications can be displayed via a browser window on a desktop or mobile device. How web browser messages display will differ depending on each browser.

First, you must receive permission from the user before sending them messages. However, the opt-in process is simple, and push notifications tend to have high opt-in rates. Once users have opted-in, you can send browser notifications at any time, even if they’re not currently using your site or web application.

5 Types of Effective Browser Notifications

Push notifications aren’t all fun and games, and there’s a fine line marketers must walk between effective vs. invasive messaging. Knowing the best practices, such as when to send and what type of notifications to send will enhance your overall push marketing strategy. Here are five types of effective browser notifications.

1. Welcome Notifications

Welcome campaigns have been around for a while and are used across nearly every marketing platform. Sending a new or returning subscriber a welcome notification is polite, can build brand trust and incentivize users to explore your website, make a purchase, or interact with your brand.

Send a welcome notification when:

• You receive new subscribers or visitors
• A user makes their first purchase

Effective welcome notifications include:

• A thank you message
• A special offer, such as a discount to award them for subscribing
• A call-to-action (CTA) such as an invitation to explore your website
• Information about current promotions or upcoming events
• Information about your brand

2. Promotional Notifications

Promotional notifications don’t have to feel like spam. These alerts are the most successful when segmented and personalized based on user activity, behavior, and preferences. Effective promotional notifications can drive conversations and build brand trust.

Send a promotional notification when:

• You have special offers, limited-time deals, discounts, promo codes, etc.
• You have a new campaign, service, or product to promote.

Effective promotional notifications include:

• A hero image, emojis, or other rich media. Rich media can increase CTR by 3%
• Pricing
• Short, intriguing text that creates urgency or exclusivity
• A CTA that leads them to the offer, product page, etc.

3. Transactional Notifications

Transactional notifications are confirmation messages alerting users that a transaction has occurred. Transactional notifications are most effective when they’re automated and targeted. If done right, transaction notifications can increase CTR up to 30%.

Send a transactional notification when:

• A user makes a purchase or pays an invoice
• Items have been shipped and delivered
• Any other transaction has transpired

Effective transactional notifications include:

• Order information
• Receipt of payment information
• Shipping and delivery updates
• A CTA to view more information, documents, or suggested items similar to what they recently purchased

4. Informative Notifications

Informative notifications educate your audience on events, new app features or updates, policy changes, etc. Informative notifications are crucial for your brand image and the customer experience. They can also increase engagement, CTRs, and conversions.

Send an informative notification to:

• Announce events, company news, policy changes, app updates, website upgrades, new site features, etc.
• Inform users of price drops on wishlist items
• Educate users on new products or services
• Alert users of known errors, website or app maintenance, or anything that may negatively affect their experience

Effective informative notifications include:

• Useful information directly related to the individual user, your brand, services, etc.
• Solutions to any issues or errors
• CTAs that lead to more information (your website, their wishlist, policy documents, etc.)

5. Abandoned Cart Notifications

Abandoned cart notifications are highly effective and see an average CTR of 16%. These notifications are used to remind visitors and consumers of items they have added to their cart but did not purchase, or added to a wishlist. The primary purpose of an abandoned cart notification is to re-engage the visitor and lead them down the funnel towards a purchase.

Send abandoned cart notifications to:

• Remind consumers that they left items in their online shopping cart without purchasing
• Alert users that items in their cart or wishlist are selling out, limited, etc.
• Re-engage users when they have shown interest in a product, service, or event by offering them an incentive to continue down the funnel

Effective abandoned cart notifications include:

• A special discount to incentivize the shopper to continue down the funnel
• Positive messages and images of the items they expressed an interest in
• Text that creates a sense of urgency to drive action
• A CTA that leads them to their wishlist, shopping cart, or directly to the products they expressed an interest in

Elements of Effective Browser Notifications

To see the best results, all browser notifications should consist of these six elements:

1. Title: Make sure your notification has a unique, attention-grabbing title to entice your audience to click. Avoid using only your company name here.
2. Body: The body should contain valuable information that will hook the user. This can include pricing, discounts, or enticing messaging. Character count can vary per browser, but a best practice is to keep your text to 40-50 characters or less — short and sweet. You only have about eight seconds before you lose your users' interest, so keep your message concise.
3. Your URL: Always include your website URL in your notifications. This will ensure the viewer knows where the message came from and where to go for more information. Having the URL will also drive traffic to your site.
4. Logo: Your notifications need to be recognizable. Do this by including your logo in the message. Most notifications have a default icon image. Update the icon with an image of your logo. Having your logo as the icon frees you from having to include your company name in the title or body.
5. Rich Media: Take advantage of your ability to include rich media such as banner images, gifs, or videos in your push messages. Push messages with rich media can increase click rates by 3%.
6. Call-to-action (CTA): Push messages need to nudge the user to take action. Including a CTA can lead to an increase of 40-60% in clicks. Include a call-to-action, hyperlink, or button within your push message to drive traffic and boost conversions. It’s important to note that CTA buttons are currently only available for Google Chrome push notifications.

Wrapping Up

As you can see, browser push notifications can be highly effective on their own. However, a unified, cross-functional push notification strategy that spans desktop, mobile apps, and browsers will drive better results. There’s no universal approach when it comes to marketing. Businesses need to analyze their audience data and user behaviors to help develop a comprehensive and effective strategy across various channels.

Failing to understand best notification practices can result in wasted labor and resources and, even worse, alert overload. The above advice should help you better understand browser push notifications to develop highly effective messages that drive growth. With MagicBell, you can create a seamless cross-channel notification system to notify your users using push notifications, email notifications, in-app notifications, and more, all while syncing notifications across channels to ensure that users don’t receive the same notification twice.