For most of the life of the web, if people wanted to follow the work published on a website, they would subscribe to its RSS feed. Although many web users — me included — use an RSS reader every day, publishers can no longer rely on RSS. The growth of social media, the death of Google Reader, and the shift to mobile contributed to the decline of RSS. But since the advent of WordPress site with push notifications publishers have an alternative.
We are all familiar with push notifications on mobile, but until fairly recently, it was not possible to elegantly integrate mobile push notifications with the web. The introduction of the Push API and the Notification API to browsers changed that. Today, it is relatively straightforward to add near WordPress site with push notifications to inform users of new content and promotions.
But why would a publisher want to add push notifications to a site? And is it something that consumers want? According to the evidence, the answer is yes to both questions.
When United eXtra Electronics added push notifications to its site, click-through rates increased by 12% and re-engagement increased by 400%. Engagement with of the WordPress site with push notifications is significantly higher than with other direct marketing strategies, including email newsletters.
Publishers, eCommerce retailers, and businesses with blogs benefit from the ability to deliver timely and relevant notifications to users and customers. WordPress site with push notifications is perfect for businesses that want to leverage the power of push notifications without the expense of building native applications for popular mobile platforms. Browsers running on all major mobile and desktop platforms support web push notifications.
WordPress Site with Push Notifications
WordPress sites and WooCommerce stores have a number of options to choose from and most follow the same pattern: a WordPress plugin that handles notification opt-in and that integrates with a cloud service that handles the sending of push notifications to users.
VWO Engage is among the largest and most popular push notification providers for web and mobile. It is trusted by many enterprise organizations, including Lenovo, Dominos, and HubSpot. The VWO Engag WordPress plugin will install VWO Engage’s code and allow WordPress site owners to start sending push notifications immediately. One major limitation with PushCrew’s plugin is a lack of support for Safari on iOS. iOS is not a friendly environment for web push notifications, but that may change in the future.
Alternatives to VWO Engage include iZooto, OneSignal, and PushAssist.
WordPress Site with Push Notifications and Progressive Web Applications
Progressive Web Applications use a cluster of web technologies to provide a native app experience for web application users. Those technologies include Service Workers that can manage the WordPress site with push notifications.
If you have JavaScript skills, it’s straightforward to build a PWA front-end for WordPress, but the easiest way to get many PWA features, including Push notifications and offline functionality, is to install a plugin like Super Progressive Web Apps.
Push notifications increase engagement among a business’s most loyal customers and they are less expensive to implement than a native application — although if a large segment of your users prefers iOS, you’re out of luck for the time being.
