The notification feed is a powerful non-intrusive communication channel that allows you to reach your highest value visitors. It is important to note that its efficiency is highly dependent on your implementation on desktop and especially mobile devices. A "bad" implementation can limit its reach to 1% of your visitors, while a best-in-class implementation can allow you to increase its reach to 10% of visitors - including up to half of your purchasing customers.
In this article we will show you how to check the performance of your notification feed and we will share best practices to make sure you reach the best results with it.
1. How can I check the reach of my notification feed?
The "reach" of the notification feed is defined as the percentage of your visitors who opened the notification feed, with at least one published notification inside, at least once during their navigation. It can range from 1% for a bad implementation up to 10% for a best-in-class one. To verify the performance of your notification feed:
Go to the Analytics section of the app,
Select the "Notifications" channel in the top bar
Click on the "Metrics" panel on top of the chart and make sure that the "Reach" metrics is activated
Make sure that the Reach panel on top of the chart is checked in, and you can now see the reach of the notification feed over the selected period.
We also recommend you to compare how the reach of the notification varies between Mobile and Desktop devices. To do that, click on the "+" button under "Notifications" in the top bar to add a new filter, select "Device" and then "Mobile" or "Desktop".
You can now compare the reach of the notification feed on Mobile vs. Desktop. In the screenshots below, they are both best in class.
2. Best practices for the implementation of the notification feed
Most customers choose a bell icon to represent the notification feed so we will call the notification feed icon "bell" hereafter for simplicity.
2.1 Opening the bell in one click
The first implementation design choice that will allow you to get closer to a 10% reach is to allow your visitors to open the notification feed in a single click, usually by pinning it to your top bar next to other features such as search, account management and cart. If your feed implementation requires the visitor to open the menu first, you will most likely end up with a reach closer to 1%.
2.1. Keeping the bell present on scroll down
The first action most visitors take when landing on a new page is to scroll down. Since it can take a couple of second for the red "unread badge" to load at the page opening, if the visitor has already scrolled down before then, their attention will never be called to the bell and they will not click on it.
On Mobile devices, we understand that keeping the top bar on scroll down takes precious screen space. A solution that works well for our best-in-class notification users is to let the top bar disappear on scroll down but to bring it back on scroll up.
2.1. Size and visibility of the bell
A clean, high-contrast bell design with a white background gives the best visibility to the bell. The bell should be the same size as the other top bar features such as account, cart, wishlist and search.
2.3. Going further: animate the bell
A subtle animation of the bell when unread notifications are present can help direct visitors' attention to it.
We hope this article helped you become more successful with the notification feed. By focusing on your mobile experience, making the bell visible, available in one click at all times and adding an animation, you can improve your open rate up to 10x. Best in class customers are able to drive up to 20% of their website revenue from the notification feed. Do not hesitate to contact us at social@wisepops.com if you need more help.