We’re in a digital economy that increasingly favors 'push' experiences over users opening apps and sites for the information they need. Contextually relevant notifications are a differentiator in digital product, where consumers often have multiple apps capable of communicating the same content or service on each device.
3. Not just app and web
“…notifications themselves are
becoming that third runtime…”
Benedict Evans
venture capitalist with Andreessen Horowitz
Nativeapps
Responsiveweb
NOTIFICATIONS
http://ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2015/3/24/the-state-of-messaging
5. Seen on more than just the phone
Smart TVs and consolesConnected cars and HUDs Connected appliances
Desktop notifications Watches and wearables AR and goggles
6. Positive consumer sentiment
70% of consumers found all types of push
notifications, including order updates and
location-based messages, to be valuable
47% of consumers want mobile offers on
their devices when they pass by a store
Responsys Feb 2014
7. They already reach a lot of users
52% of people enable push in their apps
iOS 46% Android 59%
• The average US smartphone user has 47 apps on their phone
• In any given week, we actively use about a third of those
• Most people spend about 80% of their time with just five apps
• Users pick up their phones 221 times a day
Localytics Aug 2014
8. “The New York Times reaches about 15 million devices with our
breaking news alerts, which is just a crazy number. No
communication medium in history has ever allowed us to reach
that many people all at the same time, maybe with the exception
of television. I mean even if our Twitter account had 15 million
followers, only, what, 2 percent of them would see a tweet at
any given time. We have this great power in being able to say
whatever we want to all of these people at a moment’s notice —
and so with that comes a lot of responsibility.”
Andrew Phelps
New York Times
The platform with the broadest reach
10. notification
[noh-tuh-fi-key-shuh n]
noun
1. a formal notifying or informing.
2. an act or instance of notifying, making known, or giving notice; notice.
3. a written or printed notice, announcement, or warning
Definition of notifications
notify
[noh-tuh-fahy]
verb, notified, notifying.
to inform (someone) or give notice to
inform
[in-fawrm]
verb
1. to give or impart knowledge of a fact or circumstance to
2. to supply (oneself) with knowledge of a matter or subject
11. • Push-driven communication rather than the traditional pull-
driven experience
• Users don’t hunt for an app but respond to notifications
• Ultimate ‘lean in’ interface
• Grabs users attention (don’t do that lightly!)
• Not just written, push notifications could use any sense
‘Push’ changes behavior
12. Tone of voice
“Notifications are difficult. It’s a new format and it’s a new form
that has this sense of immediacy. But also because the most
common form of notification is a text message, they can also be
silly, they can be light, they can be personal.”
Noah Chestnut
Buzzfeed News
13. • Use icons that are well understood
• Adhere to the recommendations for the meaning of colors
• Make sure any actions to be taken are clear
• Choose only shared language and terminology
• Keep messages short and “glance-able”
Notifications must be understood
14. 1. Opaque symbology
2. Confusing
3. Uncorrelated to urgency
4. Unclear next steps
5. Can encourage ‘notification fatigue’
6. Damages trust
How not to BE UNDERSTOOD -
DASHBOARD WARNING LIGHTS
16. 1. Web Notification API
2. Interactive notifications
3. Notification Center
4. Smart Watches
New & improved
17. 1. Web notifications
Part of HTML 5 specification
38%
62%
Supported by majority of web
users’ browsers
Requires users to opt in
Displays icon, title, message, and URL
19. Android mobile web supported
Now web pages can notify mobile users of updates and alerts
20. • Not just text, interact with notifications
• iOS and Android
• No need to interact with the app
• Dismiss or reply to a message
• Take immediate, specific action
• Make decisions or choices
• Express preferences
2. Interactive notifications
22. Swipe to dismiss or interact
You can add two to four actions and decide how
their app handles the action: buy now, favorite,
cancel appointment, etc.
23. • Up to four actions can be shown from popup alerts, two from
the lock screen, notification center or banner notifications
• Destructive actions, like trashing an email, are color-coded red
• Relatively neutral actions, like dismissing an alert or declining an
invitation, are color-coded gray
• Actions that change state, like marking something as read or
accepting an invitation, are color-coded blue
• Choose whether to require a passcode for any action
Ample developer control
26. • Exists on all platforms that support notifications: mobile, watch and desktop
• Provides an overview and history of notifications received
• Often synced across devices (both Apple and Android ecosystems)
• Support ‘widgets’ of varying complexity
• An interface in itself, often how users interact with apps
• A consistent access and discovery point
3. Notification center
27. iOS
• Introduced to iOS in iOS 5 (end of 2011)
• In iOS 9 sorted by date, removing a common complaint
• 100s of widgets available
• Interact with notifications directly
28. Android
• Much more mature than iOS, debuted in 2008
• With Lollipop have very fine grain control
• Supplemented by notification light
29. OS X
• Also supports widgets
• Can be muted
• Developers can now customize the system Share and
Action sheets to add their own extension items.
31. Android wear
Multiple cards of
information for a single
notification, flip through
for further detail pages
Swipe-able vertical stack
with a card for single
notification, grouping
multiple into one
Replies are allowed via
voice or with pre-defined
text templates
32. Apple Watch
“I’m not sure people are going to be
launching that many apps through the day
on their watch. It’ll be about the notifications,
the glances, and the watch faces,”
Matt Bischoff
the iOS Engineering Lead at Tumblr
37. • On average we receive over 70 notifications a day
• Over 60 percent of notifications are social messages
• Never risk spamming your users, err on the side of fewer notifications
• It’s an interrupt-driven world, respect the priority of the messages
• “Frequent notifications and spam notifications can turn users off,
thereby risking your ratings and user base.” Google HIG
Excess volume is a problem
38. Of course it's important to get the
balance right.
Even in a connected home you
wouldn't want an overexcited
fridge letting you know every time
it reordered milk
39. …but you need to
know the instant
your smoke alarm
detects anything.
44. It takes data to stay relevant
“…one of our issues with notifications at the moment for us
is that at the moment we don’t have much personalization
in notifications. [When] we send a BBC News alert, it goes
to everybody — no matter what time of day or night it is,
wherever they happen to be, and regardless of whether or
not they’re interested in that particular topic or not.”
Robin Pembrooke
BBC
45. • Trigger notifications when users enter a
geofence
• Set up regions for business premises
• Analyze data to target users in, or
previously in, a given region
• RetailMeNot increased engagement x4
by using geofences
Stay relevant with geofences
46. • Detect location with greater precision
• Trigger notifications with maximum
context
• Map beacons to business meaning and
not just location
• Surveys, coupons, directions, and local
information can be sent with confidence
of relevance and timeliness
Use beacons to go further
47. Timing is everything
over 3x increase Localytics Aug 2014
3%
of broadcast
push messages
are opened
7%
if the push
message is
segmented by user
behavior and preferences
over 2x increase
only 15%
of users who clicked
on a broadcast push
messages converted
54%
of users who clicked
on a segmented push
message convert
49. 1
A coffee shop story
you’re notified as you walk past the same coffee shop
each morning
Add real value by understanding your users’ needs in their current context
50. you’re notified as you walk past the same coffee shop
each morning
1
you walk in and a special coupon is put into your wallet,
your watch vibrates
2
A coffee shop story
Add real value by understanding your users’ needs in their current context
51. you’re notified as you walk past the same coffee shop
each morning
1
you walk in and a special coupon is put into your wallet,
your watch vibrates
2
transit problems mean you don’t have time to get coffee
before your meeting; you’re warned as you leave home
3
A coffee shop story
Add real value by understanding your users’ needs in their current context
53. 1. Business are focused on apps and responsive web
2. Notification often underestimated and neglected
strategically
3. Real results are clear from astute user engagement
with notifications
4. Damage can be done to trust and goodwill by
misusing the medium
Conclusion
54. 1. Use analytics and data to send relevant messages
2. Use personalized, actionable language
3. Calibrate timing and frequency from user insights
4. Allow users to opt out or tune their notifications
5. Ensure always informative or entertaining
Ongoing strategic principles
May seem a well-understood topic
Changes in hardware, software and user behavior
Notifications should a considered part of every brands digital strategy
In March of this year, Benedict Evans described notifications as “becoming the third runtime for mobile”. The first being native apps, the second being mobile web.
Every mobile strategy at least addresses the decision on native app vs mobile web but notifications tend to be an afterthought and that’s a mistake.
Notifications can be considered an interface in themselves; more than a third runtime, they could be considered as a paradigm for interaction with users in general.
Clearly, notifications should be a key and considered part of your mobile strategy
Employed by a wide variety of businesses for a wide variety of purposes
Starting to reach beyond mere pings with new content
Offered as a more timely manner of staying updated
mobile phones and tablets are not the only places your users will see notifications and experience this third runtime
it’s not enough to think about the mobile implications of your strategy
even if none of these environments is important to your users, you at least have to consider them as part of that strategy
examine how you want your experience to use notifications at each stage of your users’ journeys
future bringing more environments in which users can be notified and respond to them
your digital strategy needs to bear notification in mind as a key consideration for each new scenario
notifications resonate positively with consumers
seen as a compelling value add
mitigated by over-use or pointless notifications
key use cases (like a store reaching out to nearby customers) widely seen as desirable
the majority of phone usage is across very few apps
little app loyalty as every category is well populated
nobody “owns” the digital real estate on users’ smartphones
smart move instead is shaping up to be strategically renting that real estate instead
more than half of users enable notifications
76% of younger consumers (18-34) habitually enable push notifications
Android share is higher as notifications are enabled by default … for now
breadth of the reach of notifications can dwarf even social media networks
with great outreach comes great responsibility
raising issues that even traditional brands have to consider
dictionary definition just talks to the “imparting of knowledge”
digital notifications should inform … or entertain, sometimes that’s the use case
Microsoft Research defines a notification as “a visual cue, auditory signal, or haptic alert generated by an application or service that relays information to a user outside her current focus of attention”
push notifications have done great things
without them, mobile messaging couldn’t exist
digital notifications use sight, sound and touch to get our attention
many other systems of notifications across (almost!) every sense
manner and medium chosen by which sense to stimulate
ideal when made subtle: notification using the same mechanism as the medium
notifications are immediate so can be urgent
tend to be very intimate, you’re communicating with someone’s pocket, hand, wrist, desktop, etc
choose your tone carefully
alternative is to make notifications more like the content they coexist with on a platform
tone could be more social and friendly
publishers with a more traditional voice will find it more difficult to adapt than publishers like BuzzFeed and Vice who’ve already cultivated this social tone
not only do we have to think about a faster language, also have to select the source of the content that should be reported
Facebook notifications are not so essential, important to notify about an imminent calendar appointment
with short time to capture user imagination, vital the user immediately comprehends
not the time to be introducing new terminology
The equivalent of silencing your notifications
user is forced to lose the potential beneficial effect because there is no trust that it’s an important notification
web notifications allow you to reach out to your users’ desktops even when they’re not on your site
only 62% of global web users can use but that excludes all IE users and all iOS users
web notifications are supported on desktop and Android mobile only … but that’s an important fact too.
being used by early adopters including Beyond the Rack, eBay, Facebook, FanSided, Pinterest, Product Hunt, and VICE News as well as Google for Gmail and more
here is housewares brand, BeyondTheRack
without having their app installed or their site open, they can engage with their customers
take action on texts, email, calendar invitations, reminders, and even messages from apps like Facebook right from their notification banners
without leaving the app you’re in, if any
it’s easy to quickly reply to important messages and keep doing what you were doing
for example, on the Lock screen, in Notification Center, or as part of a banner, you might see "Accept" and "Decline" as actions
on a popup model alert, however, you might see "Accept", "Maybe", "Decline", and "Block" as action buttons
on the Lock screen and within Notification Center, you swipe from right to left to reveal actions
for Lock screen notifications, developers can choose whether to require a passcode for any action
in fact, this is open to all in the latest beta of iOS 9 but that’s documented so don’t rely on it … yet
currently only supported by Messages
you can see image attachments from the notification
imagine being able to send a weather icon, a product image or a chart
“picture worth a thousand words”
now include widgets: weather or traffic conditions, flight updates, etc
brings the notification light, the best lost feature of BlackBerry, back to mobile notification
5 million non apple smartwatches in the US in 2015 alone
allows user engagement like saying “Good morning!” to your user as soon as the watch detects motion then providing a link to a roundup of the day’s news or some sort of a briefing … hugely compelling
Pages: say a meeting alert, followed by the agenda and list of participants
glances, complications, apps and, perhaps most importantly, notifications
each platform has its usual session time:
Mac: Hours
iPad: Quarter-hours
iPhone: Minutes
Watch: Seconds
a “short look” splash screen is displayed first and then nicely transformed into a “long look” notification with additional content and up to four actions
allows more styling and branding than notification on any other platform
all adds up to notifications being a vital third pillar of your mobile strategy
build goodwill and don’t betray that trust
it’s cold in the notification wilderness
this is USA Today asking permission to send notifications to an Android watch
clear how often it will notify
clear what the value is to the user
passive aggressiveness notwithstanding, highly effective
if your notifications aren’t resonating with a user, stop
the alternative is the user disabling notifications for your app entirely
you can resume if something (including user behavior) changes
can’t resume if they have silenced you, take the first step
this is Facebook
allowing the user to decide what’s important to them
another waaaay better alternative to having your notifications disabled
be granular in the control you offer
broadcast without consideration of time or context leaves you blind
impossible to gauge value to the user without that context
not just an aspect of a consumer user experience
timely notifications (e.g. of critical updates) create a positive association of a user’s experience with enterprise apps
build trust by reinforcing the notion that the app or site will have timely and up-to-date information
huge uptick in real business, and real user engagement, when you start with your user’s context
adding value is only possible when you understand your users’ journeys
the first scenario is great
use your customer’s location to provide a service they might well want then
risk saturating your users
do you take opening hours into account, or frequency of message
what’s the experience like if you live next to the coffee shop
second scenario tightens it up:
by using a beacon by the door, you’re notifying only the users you know are coming to you
you have provided tangible value by giving a coupon valid there and then
make use of the technology available: Wallet and a watch allow a richer, more integrated, experience
the final scenario is so much more:
allow the user to pre-order from a coffee shop by their destination, say
using static data (transport routes), user data (their usual, or saved, destination), and dynamic data (live traffic volumes)
pre-empt user need and enter into a partnership with your users