How to Set up Free WordPress Push Notifications
Push notifications, also referred to as web push notifications, have gained a lot of popularity among online businesses and marketers over the last couple years. These present another way to capture your audience, increase return visitors, and in most cases have shown drastically higher CTR and engagements vs that of your typical newsletter signups.
Today we are going to dive into what exactly WordPress push notifications are, how they can help you expand your website’s reach, and how to quickly add them to your site.
Push Notifications
WordPress push notifications allow you to automatically notify your audience when you have published new content on your site, Or you can send out predefined messages at any time.
This can be a notification on a phone or via a browser, such as Chrome, Firefox, or Safari.
Push notifications were originally introduced for Android and iOS devices in 2009 and have been spreading to other platforms ever since. If we look at Google trends between 2014 and today, we can see that the interest around “web push notifications” has been steadily increasing.
Below is an example of a push notification signup request, which you have probably seen before. By clicking “Allow” this enables the site to send you notifications via your browser. The beauty for website owners is that the visitor doesn’t have to be on your site for them to get your notification, they simply have to have their web browser running.
Benefits of WordPress Push Notifications
The major benefits of push notifications are that they provide another avenue of communication for your WordPress site.
Lots of people skim over emails nowadays, or simply don’t even read them. Push notifications can help bring customers and visitors back to your site by placing your message right in front of them. If you have some doubts about how well push notifications work, check out some of these case studies:
There are many case studies from companies that have had massive success with push notifications. Whether you run an WooCommerce shop or an informational blog, push notifications are definitely something you should try as part of your marketing strategy.
Are push notifications for everyone? Definitely not. Some might feel that they hurt the user experience too much. In any case though, remember not to overuse them, as this might come off as annoying.
How to Set up WordPress Push Notifications
When it comes to setting up WordPress push notifications you have a lot of great options now to choose from. Below are a couple popular and actively updated ones. Note: These include free and premium solutions. Many of them have free plans up to a certain number of subscribers.
OneSignal
SendPulse
VWO Engage
PushUp
Pushify
Pushprime
Roost
PushAssist
iZooto
Desktop & Mobile Push Notification System
Since all of the above solutions have different browser and mobile support, I suggest looking in your Google Analytics data to see what type of traffic your WordPress site has. If you click into “Audience > Technology > Browser & OS” you can see which browsers are most frequently used by visitors on your site. In this example below you can see that enabling Chrome web push notifications would benefit us the most since over 70% of the desktop traffic is from Google Chrome.
In this tutorial we will be using a plugin from OneSignal, which is a completely free solution for WordPress push notifications. As of writing this it currently has 100,000+ active installs and rating of 4.7 out of 5 stars.
According to their website, they are used by over 100,000 developers, including big names such as Adobe, Uber, and Tom’s Hardware. Some of their features include:
100% free to use
Unlimited WordPress push notifications
Unlimited devices
Delivery automation
Localization
Full API
Unlimited segments
A/B Testing
Delivery scheduling
Ability to import and export your data
Step 1
Download and install the free OneSignal plugin. You can download it from the WordPress repository or by searching for it within your WordPress dashboard under “Add New” plugins.
STEP 2
Next, head over to OneSignal and create a free account.
STEP 3
Click on “Add a new app” and give your app a name. In our example, we are simply using the name of our WordPress site. Then click on “Next: Configure Your Platform.”
[the_ad id=”14390″]
Step 5
Input your WordPress Site URL. Ensure you use the correct protocol, HTTP or HTTPS depending upon what you are running on your site. In our example our site is using HTTPS. Then input the location of your notification icon URL. According to OneSignal, icon dimensions should be 192 x 192 or larger to display well on high pixel density devices. You can upload one to your WordPress media library and copy the URL. The default OneSignal notification icon will be used if you don’t choose one. Then click “Save.”
Step 6
On the next screen, you will want to copy your Rest API key and App ID as you will need to input this information into the settings of the WordPress plugin. Leave this window open as you will come back here later.
Step 7
Back in your WordPress site, click into the “Configuration” tab of the OneSignal Push settings. Input your App ID and REST API Key. You can leave everything else on the default settings for now. Scroll down to the bottom and click “Save.”
Step 8
You will then want to browse to your website and subscribe to the notification to test that everything is working correctly. Click on the “red” symbol on the bottom right and click on “Allow.” You can change these options in the display settings later. (Note: You might need to disable adblocker if you have it running)
Summary
As you can see, WordPress push notifications are fairly easy to set up! It might seem like a few steps, but really it can all be completed within a matter of 5 minutes. If you are looking for additional avenues to connect with your visitors or customers, we recommend giving this a try. There really is no risk involved. If you don’t like it, you can simply uninstall the plugin, cancel the service, and return to normal. Push notifications can be a great way to get extra eyeballs on your content and keep visitors returning to your WordPress site.