Firefox Web Push Notifications : A Beginner's Guide | Vizury |
Posted: June 1, 2020 |
Firefox (version 44+) for Windows, Mac, and Linux now lets you choose if you want to receive browser push notifications from websites if you’ve given them permission. This is similar to Web notifications, except now you can receive notifications for websites even when they’re not loaded in a tab. This is super useful for websites like shopping (eCommerce), online retail business, news, email, weather and social networks which you might check frequently for updates. This new marketing channel helps re-engage your site visitors without requiring them to submit their email or other contact details. All that the user must do is subscribe to notifications from your brand when prompted. Web Push Notifications already work on over 85% of devices. Notifications from websites are indistinguishable from native notifications, and Vizury’s demo e-commerce site showcases a live demo where you can see this for yourself. Much like with geolocation or webcam access, Web Push requires explicit, revocable permission before a website can show notifications to a user.
Why should you use Firefox Push Notifications?This is what David Bryant, Vice President of Platform Engineering and Interim CTO at Mozilla has to say about desktop push notifications.
Push notifications are one of the most valuable capabilities of native apps, and this experience is now available on the web. To get the most out of Web Push Notifications, it needs to be timely, precise, and relevant at a user level.
a) Timely : I feel I need it and it matters right nowA timely notification is one that appears when users want it and when it matters to them the most. b) Precise : It has specific information that's good to know or act uponA precise notification is one that has specific information that can lead to action immediately. c) Relevant— It’s from people or sources that matter to me, which make it personalA relevant message is one about people or subjects the user cares about. How to use firefox browser push notifications platform in your business!1) Go mobile but without an app:Firefox web push notifications save you from all the efforts & cash that you'd otherwise need to invest in building an app & more importantly get it installed. This means you can connect to your audience at any point of time with asking for personal information and still enjoy the instant nature of this channel.
2) Drive more sales:It reduces your cart-abandonment rate by sending immediate offers & notifications to customers who left one or several items in their cart. A lot of business still use emails to reduce cart-abandonment, but these easily go unopened. Browser push notification platform actually solves this problem by ensuring that people get notifications even if they are visiting other websites. For example- Make the user complete the purchase as soon as he drops from the cart or at any other time that you may choose Eg: 15 min, 30 min, 1 hour, 4 hours, 12 hours
3) Re-engage your users like never before:It is difficult to increase engagement on email or any other free channel. You usually choose to go a paid channel to increase engagement. However, with web push, you scale re-engagement and touch base with your inactive users by notifying them with personalized notifications. Additionally, you can send notifications with deals, or offer updates basis their interest & on-site behavior. Therefore, it allows you to build relationships & improve your earnings. For example, Re-engage with the users who have not visited your website in the past week. In Addition, you can share unique coupon codes, product details or visited categories to get them back!
3) Timely updates:Need to send a time-limited deal or announce a sale? You can use firefox push notifications and instantly reach your users on their desktop, mobile or tablet with push notifications, even when they are not on your website. The instant nature of this channel will turn the timely offer to an immediate conversion.
How does Firefox Push work?Here is a simple 5 steps process to understand and send firefox push notifications: 1. Requesting permissionYou start with asking your visitors for permission to send web notifications. 2. Registering a service worker and subscribing to pushThen you register a service worker (It is a small JavaScript program with superpowers like intercepting network requests or running even when their parent website is closed) to control the website. You basically identify your visitors here and get their device token id. Here, you can get your visitors to subscribe for web push notifications. It returns a Promise that resolves with a Push Subscription object. The subscription object exposes metadata about the subscription, including a unique endpoint URL on your browser vendor’s Push Service. 3. Push servers, and sending push messagesYou need a server component to send push notifications. These servers should be able to handle secure request/ response and data encryption. Whenever the website POSTs to that endpoint, the Push Service routes the message to your browser, where the appropriate Service Worker receives a push event. The Service Worker can then show a notification or take other actions. 4. The service worker, and responding to push messagesThe website uses the push manager to either get an existing subscription or create a new one. So, you will also need to set up a responder to respond to push messages being received. 5. Handling premature subscription expirationSometimes push subscriptions to expire prematurely, without unsubscribing being called. This can happen when the server gets overloaded, or if you are offline for a long time. This is highly server-dependent, so the exact behavior is difficult to predict. What about privacy?Web Push works by maintaining a persistent connection to a Push Service that acts as a central relay for messages. Each browser vendor runs its own Push Service, and it’s been designed to safeguard your privacy: 1. To prevent cross-site correlations, every website receives a different, anonymous Web Push identifier for your browser. 2. To thwart eavesdropping, payloads are encrypted to a public/private keypair held only by your browser. 3. Firefox only connects to the Push Service if you have an active Web Push subscription. This could be to a website, or to a browser feature like Firefox Hello or Firefox Sync. You’re always in control: Push notifications are opt-in, and you can revoke permission from any website at any time, either from the page info panel or from the “Notifications” section in Preferences → Content.
ConclusionsWeb push notifications are one of the best communication channels in the entire spectrum. Chrome, Safari, and Firefox cover almost 75% of the total browser stack. Firefox push browser notifications are unique in terms of technology and deliverability. They are prompt, relevant and very specific. With little advancement in the technology they can be personalized. For example, you can insert individual-specific information to make good use of it.
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