The beginner’s guide to web push notifications.

Web push notifications let a website reach its visitors after they leave, with a short message that appears on their screen even when your site is closed. This guide covers everything you need to add them to your own marketing, from how they work to what to send.

Web push notifications are short, clickable messages that a website sends to people who have agreed to receive them. They look like the notifications you get from apps on your phone, but they come from a website, and they arrive on desktop computers, laptops, tablets and phones.

Nobody has to install an app or hand over an email address. A visitor clicks Allow on a prompt in their browser, and from then on your site can send them notifications. Clicking one takes them to the page you choose.

Web push is quick to set up and needs no special technical knowledge. It is also hard to miss: the notification appears on the subscriber’s screen, on desktop and mobile, even when your site is not open in their browser.

Subscribing takes one click, so building a list is easier than with email, and each push is a direct route back to your site. Results vary with your audience and what you send, but the numbers from Aimtell customers give a sense of it:

• A news platform averages a 2.1% click rate across its campaigns, with breaking news alerts reaching 4.96%.
• Rhone, a men’s activewear brand, saw click rates as high as 7.4% on segmented campaigns.

Inboxes are crowded and social reach is unpredictable. Web push gives you a channel that goes straight to the people who asked to hear from you.

Subscribers in one click

Plenty of people will not share an email address or phone number. With web push they do not have to. One click and they are subscribed, and you can target them based on what they do on your site.

More returning visitors

Relevant pushes bring subscribers back regularly, and bring back people who have not visited in a while.

A message that gets noticed

A push does not land in a spam folder or a promotions tab. It appears on screen, and one click takes the subscriber back to your site.

No app required

You reach people on desktop and mobile without building or maintaining an app, for a fraction of the cost.

Web push is best known in ecommerce and publishing, but it works for almost any website. Banks, schools, agencies, entertainment sites and software companies all use it. Here is how some of them put it to work:

You send web push through a provider like Aimtell, which handles delivery to each browser. Setting it up takes a few steps:

1. Install the plugin or snippetOn Shopify, WordPress or BigCommerce, install the Aimtell app or plugin. Anywhere else, paste one line of JavaScript into your site.
2. Upload the service workerIf you used the snippet, upload one small file to the root of your site. It is what lets the browser show your notifications.
3. Set up the opt-in promptChoose when and where visitors are asked to subscribe, and what the prompt says.
4. Build your segmentsGroup subscribers by the pages they view, where they are, their device, and the events and attributes you track.
5. Send your first campaignWrite the title, message and link, pick a segment, and send it now or schedule it.

A visitor has to opt in before you can send them anything. Once they do, they are a subscriber, and your provider starts collecting useful information: the pages they view, whether they leave items in a cart, whether they sign up for your newsletter. That information is what you build segments from, so each push goes to the people most likely to care about it.

A web push notification has an icon, a title, a message and your site’s address. Some browsers can also show a large image and up to two action buttons. Clicking the notification opens the page you linked.

Large images show on Chrome for Windows and Android, and are a good way to make a push stand out. You can change the icon for each campaign, and use emoji to catch the eye.

Each browser draws notifications a little differently and cuts text off at different lengths. Our documentation keeps an up to date list of character limits by browser and device.

Web push works in all the major browsers: Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Microsoft Edge, Opera and Samsung Internet, on desktop and on Android.

ChromeSafariFirefoxEdgeOpera

iPhones and iPads support web push too, since iOS 16.4. On those devices a visitor adds your site to their Home Screen first, then subscribes from there. Our documentation has a guide to setting up web push for mobile Safari.

Without opt-ins you have no subscribers, so the prompt deserves real attention. Once your provider is installed, visitors see a prompt asking whether your site can send them notifications. They can allow it, block it or close it.

The browser’s standard prompt only asks for permission. A custom prompt, shown first, lets you tell people what they will get, like breaking news, early access to sales or alerts about their account, which gives them a reason to say yes. You can also show different prompts on different parts of your site, for example:

• different sections or product categories
• new posts or product updates
• special offers

With Aimtell you can also let subscribers pick the topics they want on the prompt itself, and use their choices to segment later.

Every brand’s strategy is different, but a few rules apply to everyone.

The best way to see what web push can do is to look at real results. These Aimtell customers each took a different approach: