How does Website Push Notifications Work?

By default, whenever you install a mobile app, you give the app the permission to send you push notifications on your device. Websites, however, have to explicitly take permission from their users to send them push messages. This is how website push notifications work:

The first step is getting opt-in from visitors. As soon as someone arrives on a website, an opt-in box is triggered. If the visitor clicks on “Allow”, he/she is added to your subscriber list.

As soon as a ‘visitor’ becomes a ‘subscriber’, you can send them push notifications from your website. The title message and the text message are customizable within certain character limits and a URL has to be specified. These notifications will arrive in real-time even if the browser is not open at that point of time. Clicking on the notification will take the subscriber to the URL specified.

There are three actors involved with delivering a push notification, along with a fourth, optional, component for advanced functionality.

  1. Push Notification Service: Each browser, including Chrome, Safari and Firefox have their own notification delivery service. Chrome uses Google Cloud Messaging ( and now Firebase Cloud Messaging ), Safari uses Apple Push Notification Service ( APNS ) and Firefox uses MDN servers.
  2. Service Worker Registration: Developer must register the service worker on the browser. This is only for Chrome and Firefox. Safari does not support service workers.
  3. User’s Subscription ID: Subscriber ID is generated when a user opts in to receive notifications from a specific website.

Additionally an SDK (OS client library Software Development Kit) can be added to a web app for extended segmentation and analytics capabilities.

Strategies to Increase Sales with Web Push Notifications

With web push notifications you can increase your e-commerce sales a lot, especially if you are able to make and combine your strategies. With web push notifications you can:

1. Customize your communication