Introduced by Apple in Safari in 2009, and now adopted by all browsers, browser push notifications today constitute a key channel for off-site engagement with new and existing website visitors.
While the channel itself has continuously evolved with richer features, browsers have also been upping their user interfaces and functional fluidity to enhance the users’ experience.
Recently, Google Chrome announced a global change for Windows 10 users. On August 8, 2018, Googler Peter Beverloo shared on Twitter that Google has started rolling out support for native notifications in the Chrome 68 browser using the Windows 10 Action Center. With this new notification experience, all notifications in Chrome will now be displayed in the Windows Action Centre.
The Windows Action Centre will aggregate the received notifications and users can preview them by clicking the bottom right corner button of the screen as shown below.
On clicking the message icon, users can see a pop up that showcases the latest notifications (up to 20 notifications; this limit can be changed within the settings).
Similarly with the Focus Assist feature on Windows 10, users can now mute the notifications to “do not disturb” mode to avoid getting distracted while performing important tasks, watching movies, playing games etc.
This development might appear to be a god-send for users who might often get distracted by the growing number of browser push notifications that they receive through the day, it can adversely affect a marketer’s life!
In fact, there is likely to be a brief drop in CTRs and consequent conversions as also highlighted in Beverloo’s tweet. But, it is merely a matter of time before users become accustomed to accessing their notifications from the Action Centre.
While this definitely poses an initial challenge for you, it also gives you a chance to re-focus on delivering highly personalised, contextual, and time-sensitive browser push notifications that add real value to the user experience and aren’t merely perceived as intrusive or distracting.
While you’re at it, check out Smartech’s comprehensive report on browser push notifications right here!
With the express intention of empowering the data-driven marketer – like you – who has a firm pulse on the evolving technological environment, we at Smartech, conducted a few test scenarios to assess the impact of this new feature when it comes to displaying these notifications.
Here are some of our findings:
Case 1
- Image size: 320 x 240 px.
- Content part: 320 x 240 px.
- Use case: No adjustment in the image
- Result: Bottom portion of the image gets overlapped creates visibility issues
Case 2
- Image size: 320 x 240 px.
- Content part: 320 x 185 px.
- Use case: Left a 55 px. space blank
- Result: Some part of the text gets overlapped
Case 3
- Image size: 320 x 240 px.
- Content part: 320 x 180 px.
- Use case: Left a 60 px. space blank
Result: The browser push notification gets perfectly displayed
Conclusion: Based on our findings, we can see that if we keep the content under 180 px. of height, the notification gets perfectly displayed on Windows 10. However, for users who are not using Windows 10, there will be a blank space of 60 px. in the message. As the feature is being rolled out globally we can hope to see periodic enhancements to optimise for best user experience results.
To learn just how you can leverage the power of AI and ML to deliver highly effective user behaviour-driven browser push notifications, schedule a demo, today!
