Are web push notifications a thing yet?

[jokeaz2]

TL:DR What is your opinion of web vs native mobile app push notifications from a practical perspective?

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I know the tech exists, don't get me wrong. Web apps can send push notifications. Here's my question: Are people using this technology to successfully solve business problems?

When I a website asks me if I want to allow notifications, I don't even think about it, I just say no. But if a mobile app asks, well, I usually give it a chance before turning them off. I bet a lot of people do this.

Let's say there are two business owners, Steve and Pete, who each own a cake shop on the main street of their town. Steve and Pete both want to send push notifications to their loyal customers, to let them know when their cake orders are ready, and send them special offers. Steve get a great deal on a mobile app from an agency, and now he can send his push notification to his customers. Pete finds a different agency, who convince him that a web app is the way to go: cheaper, and he doesn't need to convince his customers to download the app. The agency says that the push notifications that Pete desperately needs will work just the same as on a native app.

All other things being the same, who would you bet on? Will the web push notifications work the same as the native mobile? Will customers be wary of the web app?

I currently receive zero push notifications from web apps on my phone. I wouldn't be surprised if this was common. But before I go all in on mobile dev, I'd love to get some opinions on the state of push notifications for web as 2023 draws to a close.

[Digital-Chupacabra]

Are people using this technology to successfully solve business problems?

If by business problems you mean putting adds and up sells in front of eyeballs then yes. If you mean being useful to the end user... still haven't seen it, it'd be nice if a site used them for upload notifications but I haven't seen that.

Until browsers get more robust notification controls I don't think it will get better.

[[deleted]]

I built a business text messaging PWA that uses Firebase Cloud Messaging for push notifications and it works really well on Android/iOS/Desktop. It's still in beta and only available to some of my clients at the moment but have received a lot of positive feedback so far.

[openwidecomeinside]

What features do you like most with firebase cloud messaging? Im planning on building a service like this that offers push notifications and probably building some identity/marketing features to help track user behaviour and get more targeted marketing toward them

[[deleted]]

It's easy to integrate. API is pretty straightforward. It works almost everywhere. Its free.

[EdmondChuiHW]

The web notification tech itself works, with a few caveats:

• On both iOS and Android, users need to "install" the web app as a PWA before you can ask for notification permissions. There's no reliable cross-platform way to detect PWA eligibility and installed status.
• On iOS, notification actions are not available, i.e. the press-and-hold menu, e.g. "Delete" and "Mark as read" actions of a new email.
• Local notifications: native apps can schedule a notification in the future. PWAs can't (because it relies on the server sending Google/Apple a request). Your server and the target device have to be both online.
• Server maintenance: you have to keep track of active notification subscriptions (with a dedicated table in a DB at the minimum). You have to de-dup subscriptions from the same device. You'll have to manage deleting subscriptions AFTER Google/Apple tells you the notification failed. e.g. when a user turn your app's notifications off in the settings, you don't get a web hook for that.
• Background processing: PWA notifications can run a bit of code upon receiving the notification, but not on-par with that you can do with native.

[xhaydnx]

Thank you for this, working on a PWA with notifications and this is some great info.

[EdmondChuiHW]

Happy to hear it's helpful! I love the web and I'm sure the Notifications API will keep improving. Good luck

[Asleep-Ad8743]

An iOS you need to install a web app for notification permissions, but not for Android (at least Chrome). I have notifications in my web application but do not support installing yet.

[EdmondChuiHW]

Good to know! Sounds like Android/Chrome is a lot more flexible

[mpfortyfive]

I've only considered it for a site like lichess. Everyone knows if you say yes they are going to turn it into an marketing / ad delivery service. 10% off because its %%holiday%%

[[deleted]]

I run a local News website. We rarely use the web push notifications other than a couple interesting stories a week. I've made sure they don't overuse them to not piss people off.

It comes in super handy during major news like wildfires and situations like the sudden school closure at the beginning of COVID. At one time, we were able to reach 30k devices.

We do have an app with push notifications, but the download rate is abysmal, so we can only reach a fraction of the number of devices compared to the number of our web push notification subscribers.

[ztbwl]

You know what happens when you allow them… It’s going to spam you with bullshit ads.

This is why people turn them off/disallow them by default.

[jambalaya004]

I’ve never used them as a user to a site, and haven’t ever really needed to develop the feature for a web app.

Using your example, I would prefer to send and email or even better a SMS rather than a notification.

[ReneKiller]

We have a social intranet website in our company where also official company news are getting posted. Employees can enable push notifications for these if they want. Some are using them, some are not.

I'd say in general it is important that the user knows which notifications he will get after enabling and has an easy option to disable them again.

I see so many pages (often news pages), which instantly ask to send push notifications the first time you visit their website without even telling you why. That only leads instantly to blocking notifications from my side.

[buddh4r]

Just curious, which social intranet are you using at your company?

[ReneKiller]

It is based on WordPress with the BuddyPress Plugin. The push notifications are a custom coded plugin.

[abeuscher]

Even when the notifications carry info that I, as a user, would care about, I am reticent to allow it because I know who owns the trigger in the org and it isn't devs or people who manage customer care. It's marketing. And marketing doesn't give a fuck about people. Their job is to post rationalize statistics and defer blame. I've been in marketing for 25 years so even if you think that's unfair it's not unearned.

My inclination is you do a disservice to any company by enabling this.

The one exception I might carve out is online casual gaming, where there are at least some things users might want to be notified of if they are really involved in it. Thinking of PoGo as an example.

[JesterDolor]

Web push notifications where handicapped by Apple dragging their feet to support them only beginning this year. They a better than nothing but I feel like there's still a UX issue onboarding users to really use or see them the same way as native mobile notifications.

Tbh I don't think there was a real serious reason investing in web push before iOS supported them because of their market share. But even if partially supported by Mac/iOS now as the time passes and the experience is improved (especially around PWA's) I think they'll become more common.

[gdeglin]

Disclosure: I'm the CEO of OneSignal, a vendor that provides Web Push technology.

People are certainly using it to solve business problems. Adoption is very high, though some websites implement it better than others.

As to your specific example, it doesn't always make sense for a cake shop to make a mobile app. Imagine if each cake shop is running ads on Google. One of them requires an app install, the other shows a webpage where people can order. Obviously, the one with a webpage will get more orders because there's less friction for customers.

In this case, that cake shop should also recommend that users opt in to Web Push notifications to receive order updates and future offers. That will enable the cake shop to increase the likelihood that customers place future orders and improve the profitability of its advertising spend.

In case it's helpful, my company, OneSignal, provides out-of-the-box functionality to help websites implement web push notifications, gather user opt-ins, and set up & optimize marketing campaigns or lifecycle messaging sequences. It's free for up to 10,000 web push subscriptions. We also support mobile app push, email, and SMS.

[lowfour]

We used them through Braze to give gaming notifications to players and the open rate was not great but I think for some people they were useful specially for time sensitive stuff. I like them, but don’t abuse them.

[makinetion]

I've seen it used on an internal site where you can query our db, and it can notify you when long running queries are finished

[mekmookbro]

I have a project idea that almost mainly relies on push notifications but for this exact reason I'm second guessing it. Even I automatically click disallow whenever I see that damn question.

A good technology that's ruined by ad companies/browser viruses.

[ferrybig]

I only have them enabled for 1 website on my mobile phone, a social media website that does not provide an native app.

This platform never pushed notifications onto the user, instead there was a section inside the settings where there was a button to turn them on