Push Notifications — A year in review
Android Notifications have been in the limelight for 2 consecutive years at the Google IO 2015 and 2016. It has gone through some design improvements and also customization abilities. Android N packs a lot of power for messaging apps as well. Let’s pause and look back at how it was like to receive, interact with notifications on Android in the last one year.
I have always pointed out that this is one of the most abused engagement channels of the current times, it is also a huge source of entertainment. Yes, you heard me right. Read on. . .
The Lost Souls 😳
These are the folks who mess with the platform, context, and intent. They forget, where they are, what they are doing and for whom it is intended. The folks at ICICI Bank thought it was nice to promote their mobile website to folks who had installed their app.
Thats not all they thought let’s leave the notification title, who needs to anyway. Shit happens right. Yes, it does.
Let’s move on to see how our next lost soul lost their way.
So Urban ladder decided to send an app update notification. Cool, lets update, I click on it but it opens the app. Wait What!! Yes it opens the app. Shows me a similar image and a **huge** button below it saying “Download on Google Play”. Strange!! If I had never downloaded the app, how did I get it on my phone? But still, the kid in me tells me to click it. So I click it again. It opens the play store within the app. Okay, that tells me this is an embedded WebView. Since, its a webview, I am not logged in and it shows me INSTALL instead of UPDATE. I was literally rolling on the floor laughing 😝😜 and pressed back only to see the same image and a “Know more” button below it.
Even the best sometimes get lost. Whilst the following might have been a system level trigger and the folks who bought this new toy did not know this might happen.
Actually there were 3 notifications. 1st was a service extended, then a rollback and then the final extended notification. I was so intrigued with the 1st one, I clicked on it without taking a screenshot.
Then there are those lost souls who simply thought of testing in the production environment. 😎
The Bullies 💂🏻🏻👹
Then there are those who think bombarding the users with notification would really drive their sales. Why not send them a travel offer every day, maybe we can force them to take a holiday or make a guy buy a girl’s dress after we have convinced him that he needs it.
Notifications from Fassos in the above image seems to a system fault, while the one from Megacabs is not. Why not? Look at the text, one text is without a leading space while the other is with a leading space. Not just that, they decided to change the text as well. The dumb folks at Yepme simply want to be heard. I listen to random playlists on Gaana while I code, so it decides to keep me informed.
Lets leave Myntra aside, they are app only and are desperate to make some money 🤑. They were simply trying to convince people to buy. Nevertheless, their collection is pretty decent.
Just to be clear, I do not mean to say all these brands are bad. I have personally spent hours on Gaana, bought furniture worth more than 40K from UrbanLadder and surprisingly booked cabs via Mega Cabs. Not to say the countless times I have ordered from Fassos and last but not least, I did not change my bank, ICICI for the last 6 years.
The Novelists ✍🏻
Some folks think they can share everything with their users. Here is what it looks like, when they do so.
The best part is, ZipGo could not finish what they wanted to say.
The Good Guys
Enough of banter let’s get back to some serious topic. Twitter on the other hand understood Android notifications and its capabilities. It used it will.
Not only did they build a good customization, when posting normal text notifications, they customized the large bitmap on the left to give context to the message. Even then I believe, the title “Twitter” was not required since we get to see the small icon at the bottom. 👏🏻
In the same image you get to see FreshMenu sending out garbage to a user who love their food.
Google Now notifications are even better. They set a decent icon about the context, the title and message are crisp and useful. They also have enough information that makes you click on it. The text on the right corner, “28 cards” tells me there is more information in there.
With Lollipop, we saw changes in notification display. Android 5.1 ensured developers adhere to the notification guideline of transparent, white notification icons. They added a white mask on top of all icons. Thats the reason why Taxi For Sure Apps icons were all but white boxes.
Folks started using the notification actions buttons. Marketers started looking at deep linking to drive their conversion goals. BookMyShow was an early adopters for action buttons.
But the irritating part was marketers discovering the android notification priority feature. With Snapdeal and MakeMyTrip making sure that they are my priority and trigger notifications with priority set to maximum.
Even the technology behind the scene changed in the last 2 years. Google brought in GCM PubSub. This year’s IO was even more interesting with Google addressing the network issues related to GCM connections and announcing FCM (GCM 3.0). Push Notifications Services have become a commodity and a lot of players are providing it for free. Like OneSignal and Firebase.
Google even pushed GCM to support iOS devices, while that has its own downsides, it was a huge move to unify platforms and make it easy for developers to build a unified experience.
Unlike iOS, Android does not allow the user to opt-in for notifications, but rather allows them to opt-out of it from settings. It helps the app companies to at least have a channel of communication between them and the user. If marketers do not evolve soon even that might change.
Its always good to end with on a happy note.
The Funny Folks 🙃
Snapdeal sent notifications on Big Billion Day while Flipkart did the same on Snapdeal’s Diwali Sale
Faux pas will continue to happen and it has nothing to do with a platform or event the communication channel. Take Lenskart for example, they sent an insensitive text message to iPhone users, trying to en-cash on an earthquake.
From a time where marketers did not know how to deeplink content to a time where folks send personalized notifications, from blank notifications to notifications which have, context and content, we have definitely come a long way.
