Switch to Netcore Smartech for a great Browser Push Notification experience

Marketing automation is an important part of the newly emerging marketing technologies. And, one of the most effective of these happens to be Browser Push Notifications or BPN. If you haven’t yet got on the BPN bandwagon, do it now.

Browser Push Notifications, also known as Web Push Notifications, are the notifications or messages sent by websites even while you are not visiting those websites currently. In the context of Mobile Apps, they are called App Push Notification or simply App Push (read more).

BPN refers to clickable content that is sent to you by these websites/portals, leading you directly to their website/portal. Every time you click ‘allow’ while using an app or website and the following pops up – ‘I’d like to receive notifications’, you are signing up for BPN. As a marketer, you can customise and personalise these messages as well as their reach, and they reach your consumer’s browser window even when they are offline.

One of the top Marketing Automation Solutions available in this space is Netcore Smartech, which offers one of the best Browser Push Notification services in the Industry. You can read about its features in greater detail here. You will see that BPN allows you a great deal of efficacy when targeting your consumer.

Stay with us and we’ll show you how to start using Browser Push Notifications.

You’ll find in this blog details regarding how to enable Browser Push Notifications for your website, as well as how to migrate from your existing service provider to Netcore Smartech. The latter is currently available to Chrome and Firefox users only, regardless of the type of your website, be it plain HTTP or HTTPS, the more secure version.

What you need to migrate your BPN service to Netcore Smartech from existing service:

1. Access to your website
   Make sure you have access to your HTTPS website domain (domain starts with https, for example https://netcore.in/) or your HTTP website that has your own HTTPS subdomain (for example, https://subdomain.netcorepush.com).
2. Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM) credentials
   you will require valid and genuine FCM credentials. FCM is the new version of the GCM (Google Cloud Messaging) which serves like a gateway for sending BPN. Your current vendor can give you your FCM credentials.
3. Netcore Smartech Account
   Sign up for Netcore Smartech Account, and log in. Get in touch with [email protected] for a quick and easy on-boarding.

Follow these steps to complete the migration process:  

1. • Add JavaScript CodeUsing your login credentials to access your Netcore Smartech account and copy-paste the following code into your webpages. Please note, this code is customised for each account and is available in the panel.
   • Add Service Worker file
     A Service Worker file is also made available in your Netcore Smartech Panel. Its name may differ from vendor to vendor; at Netcore Smartech, we call it sw.js, and it is supposed to be placed at website root and should be accessible as https://YOUR-DOMAIN/sw.js.And… You’re done! Welcome to Netcore Smartech!Follow steps 1 & 2 for a fresh integration of BPN with Smartech.As per Google’s Developer resources, a service worker file is a script that your browser runs in the background, apart from a web page, opening the door to features that don’t need a web page or user interaction. Today, they already include features like push notifications and background sync.

Salient Features:

1. • Existing subscribers onboarded seamlessly
     None of the old users (existing subscribers) are prompted for allow/block message. As soon as any of the existing subscribers visit your website even once, they will be migrated to Netcore Smartech without any prompt or subscription pop-up.
   • Zero-Loss Implementation
     This process is a zero-loss implementation as all the existing users would be migrated as soon as they visit your website.
   • New Subscribers
     When you go live with Netcore Smartech, only new users will be prompted to ‘allow/block’ for BPN.

Verifying Service Worker

Once you copy-paste the code as shown above and also added the service worker file to your website root, follow these simple steps to verify the process of migration:

1. Open your website in Chrome browser and open Developer Tools from the browser menu or by pressing keyboard shortcut key F12. A panel (Dev Tools) will appear in your browser window. Under this Dev Tools panel, switch to ‘Application’ tab and click on Service Worker from the list of Applications available on the left.Above step shows sw.js as source here.
2. Right-click on sw.js and click on ‘Open in New Tab’. This will open the service worker file in a new tab showing the code with-in it.For any assistance that you may require, feel free to contact our experts.