Have you been worrying about the retention rate of your website decreasing? The reason might be that among all the visitors who go to your website, half or a third of them might leave and forget about your site. So, the question is, how do you remind people about your site and encourage them to return? Push notifications are one of the best ways to retain visitors. How to add push notification to your wordpress site? It’s quite easy to add them to WordPress without needing to know any technical details. In this article, we will talk about OneSignal plugin – an ideal plugin for site owners and marketers who want to add push notifications to WordPress sites. In addition, we will mention some of the other options for you to choose.
What is push notification?
Push notifications are messages that pop up in the bottom right corner of your browser.
Common types of push notifications include:
- A headline.
- A small text message.
- A square icon image.
- A large image.
If you use push notifications on your WordPress site, it will help you get more interaction. Whenever you have new posts, offers, or promotions, subscribers will see notifications directly in their browser. This helps keep your audience engaged and coming back for more.
Interestingly, these notifications appear even when users aren’t on your website. This makes push notifications a smart way to share content and market to your customers.
Take Facebook, for example. When you log in on a computer, you often see a pop-up near the URL. By clicking “allow,” you’ll get all new notifications on your screen.
There are other types of push notifications that have short messages and two buttons: one to allow and one to disallow notifications.
If you now understand what push notifications are, let’s quickly go through their benefits. Why should you start using them right away instead of waiting?
When to use push notification on your website?
- Send timely alerts like sales events, flight updates, breaking news, etc.
- Keep users engaged by telling them about new website content, blog posts, or research.
- Remind customers about items left in their cart by sending quick updates.
- Keep customers coming back by sending push notifications with discount codes.
What are the benefits of using push notification?
If you’ve heard a lot about email marketing, you know it’s great for finding and building potential customers. Push notifications work similarly but are a bit simpler. Here are some reasons why you should use push notifications on your website:
- Like email marketing, push notifications ask users to confirm their subscription, showing they’re interested in your content.
- Users can subscribe easily without giving personal info, just by clicking “allow.”
- Push notifications can bring users back to your site, boosting your traffic.
- A short message can grab subscribers’ attention and make them click.
- Push notifications almost always get delivered, unlike emails that might end up in the spam folder.
- Many people think creating push notifications is hard, but it’s actually very easy. You’ll get ahead of your competitors.
- Push notifications are cheaper than many other paid marketing methods.
How to add push notifications to your WordPress site by OneSignal?
OneSignal – Web Push Notifications is a very popular way to integrate the push notification on a WordPress site without doing complicated or technical things.
Create OneSignal Account
First, we need to create and setup a OneSignal account on OneSignal homepage. Follow the guide in this video.
Install and setup OneSignal plugin
We will install the OneSignal – Web Push Notifications plugin from the WordPress plugin repository.
After installation and activation, go to WordPress admin > OneSignal Push > Configuration. Here, find the fields for App ID and API Key, and copy these two pieces of information from the OneSignal account. Then scroll down to the bottom to save.
Next, find the section called Prompt Settings & Subscription Bell to enable the prompt asking users if they want to subscribe. By default, this prompt is not enabled, but we recommend turning it on. Additionally, you can scroll down a bit to change the notification content. You can customise size, position, and theme of the notification
Scroll down towards the bottom of the page, and you will see the Welcome Notification Settings section.
By default, OneSignal will send a ‘welcome’ push notification to any user who subscribes to your website.
In this section, you can disable or customise this notification
Automatic notification settings is where to configure whether the plugin sends automatic WordPress notifications whenever you publish a new post.
If you only publish 1-2 posts per week, you should set this to “On.” However, if you publish posts daily, your push notifications may be considered spam. Conversely, if you do not enable this setting, each time you write a new post, you can adjust it in the WordPress editor. This way, you can control which posts will have push notifications sent to your WordPress users.
UTM Tracking Settings in OneSignal help you see how well your push notifications are working to bring traffic to your website. UTM (Urchin Tracking Module) parameters are small pieces of information you can add to the links in your push notifications. This lets you measure how effective your marketing campaigns are using Google Analytics or other tools.
Finally, we will select Save to save all configurations. From this moment, any user visiting your website will see OneSignal display a screen to subscribe to push notifications. If they decline, this prompt will not appear to bother them again.
Other alternative push notification plugins
If you want to use other plugins, here are some options:
Web & App Push Notifications by PushEngage
The plugin lets you send personalised web and app push notifications to grow your audience and increase sales. Here’s a summary of its main features:
- Send push notifications to people on different browsers and devices, like Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Opera, and mobile phones.
- Create targeted and personalised push notifications using advanced rules to segment and target your audience.
- Automatically send push notifications when you publish new content on your WordPress site.
- Connect with WooCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads to send specific push notifications for e-commerce, such as cart abandonment, browse abandonment, price drop alerts, and inventory alerts.
- Get detailed analytics and use A/B testing to make your push notifications better.
- Use an easy-to-navigate dashboard to manage your push notification subscribers, campaigns, and settings.
Push Notifications for WordPress by PushAssist
PushAssist is a WordPress plugin that helps you send push notifications to re-engage your website visitors. Trusted by thousands, it’s perfect for WordPress and WooCommerce sites.
Key Features:
- Instant notifications with message and sound alerts.
- Smart segmentation to target specific groups.
- Works on both HTTP and HTTPS sites.
- Option to use your own GCM keys.
- Automatically send notifications for new and updated posts.
Conclusion
Push notifications in WordPress are a great way to keep your visitors and subscribers coming back by always sending them the latest updates. The problem is that WordPress doesn’t have push notifications built in, so you need to add them with a plugin. In this article, we’ve picked the best plugin for you, OneSignal, and the installation is like a piece of cake. We’re recommending this plugin simply because it has a large user base and has proven to be reliable. If you are not a fan of it, then try other plugins like PushEngage or PushAssist. There are plenty of options out there, so we recommend that you shop around to find the best plugin/partner for your use case.
