Push notifications noticeably affect the lifetime of applications on mobile devices: users who allow notifications to be sent to themselves continue working with the application for much longer and do it more actively than those who refuse notifications.
Urban Airship, which promotes IAP and notification optimization solutions among mobile developers, insists on this. In August last year, she began monitoring applications using the company’s service and “gaining” 10 or more thousand launches per month. The goal is to track how notifications affect the engagement and retention of mobile app users.
The graphs below are based on the top 10 applications that have shown the best result in user retention.
According to the results of the study, after six months have passed since the installation of applications, more than 30% of users who received push notifications still used them. For comparison, after a similar period, less than 20% of users who forbade sending notifications to themselves used the same applications. Urban Airship also found out that “push users” are becoming more active in using mobile programs over time.
Based on the results of the study, the company also formed some useful tips on how best to integrate push notifications into applications. Of course, no one canceled the individual approach, but, in general, the conclusions turned out to be useful. Below are the most interesting ones.
1. Allow users to adjust the number and frequency of notifications; make sure that the section with these settings is easy to find.
2. First of all, do not send advertising messages, but those that are significant to the user.
3. The user should be able to choose what kind of notifications he wants to receive. For example, ESPN ScoreCenter can be configured so that only notifications about upcoming matches or news about teams come.
4. Conduct monitoring, observe how users respond to notifications, and adjust the application according to the data received.
The rest of the tips can be found here.