Push Notifications for eCommerce: How To Use It Effectively?

Updated on June 20, 2023 in Ecommerce by Nishant Shrimali

Let me ask you something. When you hear the notification ring on your device, what are the probabilities that you will look at it? At least once? That is because of the of the dopamine release out of curiosity. Curiosity is a very powerful cognitive response and push notifications for eCommerce uses just that to bring back returning customers.

In the following article, we are going to learn

• What is a push notification?
• Why should you use push notification for eCommerce?
• How does Push notification work?
• Types of push notification
• Types of push notification campaigns
• How do you write a good push notification for eCommerce?
• Best tips for optimizing eCommerce push notification
• Best tracking metrics

That means everything that’ll help you create the best push notification campaign for eCommerce. So without taking any more time, lets get started with this article.

What is a Push Notification?

Push notification is way of sending a message or an alert directly on the customer device that can attract them to visit your site or app again.

You can send these push notifications directly to the mobile devices, PCs and now even on their stop watches.

It is a great way to alert the user or the customers about any running campaign even when the site or the application is not running.

Normally it was used by the applications only, but with some advancement, now even the eCommerce with a website can send out push notification to recall the customers.

Why should you use Push Notifications for eCommerce?

Push notifications for eCommerce are normally used to bring sales, but here are the common reasons why you must use push notifications for eCommerce.

Increasing your Engagement

One of the key features of the push notification is to increase engagement within the customers. A well-curated setup can create an automated notification for upcoming days and campaigns.

Retain your Customer

Your returning customers is likely to spend 67% more than a new customer. This makes your old customer the most valuable piece of your business. In order to help you retain them back to your store push notification for eCommerce are used. It was seen that push notifications can help retain your customer by 71%.

Increase your Conversion Rate

As said before, returning customers are more likely to trust you and make a purchase. But in order to alert them and keep them engaged with your eCommerce store, you can use push notifications as your tool.

Moreover, the personalization that this method of marketing is unmatched by every other trick in the bag.

Enhances Brand Consistency

The Worst thing for an eCommerce company would be a customer forgetting their existence. This means no word-of-mouth marketing and no new or returning customer. 

On the other hand, when you use push notifications for eCommerce, you can keep them aware and alert about every new offer, campaign, or alter useful to them.

Nonetheless, it would help you bring the old as well the new customer through the word of mouth.

Track of Actionable Metrics

Compared to SMS or any other similar method of reaching out, push notification has better tracking and actionable metrics. Mainly there are 3 metrics.

• Push Received: The metrics show you the number of your customers who have received the notification.

• Push Clicked: This shows you the number of clicks your notification got.

• Push Discarded: Lastly, this metric shows you the number of your customers who have discarded or removed the notifications.

Also Read: What is E-commerce SKU Number?

How does Push Notification work?

Now that you are already aware of the benefits of using push notifications for eCommerce, here is a simple section to explain how it actually works for the customer as well as your eCommerce store.

You must understand that eCommerce push notifications have a bit of similarity to email marketing.

Just like you need a user to fill in the subscription form to allow eCommerce to send emails, you need to get permission from the user first to send them a notification in the future.

The following are the dialogue boxes through which a user can allow you to send a notification.

Once the user allows you to send a notification, he gets added to your subscription list which allows you to send a notification to the following user both on desktop and mobile.

Types of Push Notification

The next on this ultimate guide to push notifications for eCommerce is to understand the types of push notifications. There are two types of push notifications.

Web Push Notification

Web push notifications are simple to push notifications that a user can get on their browsers. It is used for both mobiles as well as desktop users.

Once the consent is taken by the user to receive the notification without any further installation required. Moreover, it has a CTR rate higher than the emails, that too about 4 to 8 times.

You just need a little technical knowledge and you can successfully have your web push notification created for your eCommerce site.

Mobile Push Notification

Mobile push notifications for eCommerce are much harder to create as the user needs to have the app installed through which he can receive the notification on their phones.

You can also use the browsing app as the source to share the notification which requires a good technical background. Moreover, the mobile push notification allows you to increase your engagement as the users are more likely to be active on their phones.

( Also if you are looking to learn about SMS Marketing for eCommerce, we have just updated our ultimate guide. 🙂

Types of Push Notification Campaign

Both web push notification and mobile push notification are the types of push notifications for eCommerce which can be used to run the following push notification campaigns.

Reminder Push Notification

This is a simple push notification that reminds the user if he has forgotten to fill the details in his profile. As you can guess this is a really personalized way to remind the user what is still incomplete. If the information turns out to be helpful for the user, it can make a positive impact.

Cart Abandonment Push Notification

This is among the most important push notifications for eCommerce that can help you increase your revenue drastically. Often people add the products to their carts but except for buying them, they leave the cart and exit.

You can use cart abandonment notification during an offer like a discount or free shipping which could urge customers to continue their purchasing hence increasing your profit.

Interest-based Push Notification

This an advanced, specific and highly personalised push notifications for eCommerce customers as it is targeted specifically to a group of people based on their purchase history, interaction with eCommerce and their likes and dislikes.

Moreover, you can even use the geographical location of the user to show the notification based on where they are right now. 

Rich Push Notification

Rich push notifications are the one where you can attach an image, video, gifs, emoji, and up to 2 CTA’s. These are the most common push notifications for eCommerce to keep your brand relative and alert users if any new category of product has been added to you.

Having two different CTA’s also allows you to bring more personalization, by creating two specific landing pages for the users coming through the CTA’s.

Triggered based Push Notification

Trigger-based notifications are the one where you send a series of notifications to make the user take an action on your site. Moreover triggered push notifications for eCommerce can also reduce the customer journey to make a purchase.

You can decide the series and time when each notification will be sent. Moreover there are mainly two types of triggered based push notification.

Open-ended: In this, the notifications are sent one after another even after the customer takes the desired action. It only ends when all the notifications are sent according to the pre-decided series.

Close-ended: Once the user takes the action, the following notifications stop and the campaigns end for that particular customer. It is an interactive way as the notifications are much more controlled.

How do you write a good Push Notification for eCommerce?

Now that you are aware of the types of push notifications for eCommerce and know how you can use them to interact with your audience to grow your sales, it’s time we take a step further. 

Here are some of the great ways that you must remember when you are creating push notifications for eCommerce in order to increase your sale.

Be clear with your goal

Bundling up the messages won’t work. Hence have your goals set even before you start writing for the push notifications. What action would you like your customers to take? Is it sign up, or would you like them to be aware of the offer that you are running? Have your goals clearly predefined and see create your push notifications for eCommerce.

Choose your word wisely

Firstly, stick to the point and keep your message short and straight forward. Your customer won’t have time to read through the build-up and wait for the big reveal. Hence you need to be very picky with the word when you wish to aware of your customer through push notifications for eCommerce.

Focus on framing and characters

The amount of information visible in a notification is limited hence it becomes very important for you to frame the message in a way that the key message is discovered in the first few characters.

Also while doing so, it’s important that you keep the interest of your customer up front rather than making false claims.

Create urgency

The aim of using push notifications for eCommerce is to make the customer take action. Moreover, the action is to be taken at the time when you send the alert to them. The best way to do so is by creating a sense of urgency of fear of missing out on your customers.

We highly recommend you reading eCommerce Copywriting to Improve your sale, where we discussed the ways to help you improve your copywriting skills for your eCommerce.

Best tips for Optimizing Push Notifications for eCommerce

After going through all these methods to improve push notifications for eCommerce, here are some of the very important tips to optimize your push notifications.

• Have clear Call-to-Action which appeals to the customer. For example, instead of “Click here” use “Buy Now” or instead of “Learn more” you can use “Sign me Up”.

• When using Rich Push notification, you shall use an image that’s capacitive, related to the landing page, and also attention capturing.

• Choose the right time to send the notification. Do not send them too early in the morning or late at night. Also, avoid school hours. The best way would be using A/B testing and finding out the right time to send the notifications.

• Keep the frequency of sending the notifications minimal. As good as they are for marketers, too many notifications can be irritating for the customers. Hence do not exceed the push notifications more than 1-2 a week. 

Best Tracking metrics

The best tracking metrics to check the performance of your push notifications for eCommerce would be to see the CTR. As you know, the goal of the push notification is to bring back the customer to the site.

And the best way to check whether or not this happened would be checking the Click-Through-Rate of the push notification of the campaign.

Along with the CTR, you also need to make sure that the bounce rate of the landing page. This would further show you whether or not your customer is getting what they saw in your push notification.

We highly recommend you reading how live chat support can benefit your eCommerce Business.

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