Push Notifications for OurSchoolHangout

The more attention an app receives, the longer users stay with it – or at least don’t delete it. Or the opposite: if its functionality and UI/UX are too weak, but it sends frequent and meaningless reminders. However, the key here is the proper use of push notifications, which can be helpful in a wide variety of situations.

At BuildApps, we constantly emphasize the importance of this component both for the business and its owner, as well as for the audience using the product. Today, we’ll show some features and nuances related specifically to push notifications in apps, using the OSH (Our School Hangout) example.

Want more details? Check out the next parts of the case!

When it comes to the advantages of push notifications, they are as follows:

• Information is instantly delivered to the user. Updates, feature changes, reminders about an action or event — everything appears on the screens of all users who have the app installed within seconds.
• Individualization, meaning personalized notifications and messages, taking into account user interests, location, and other related factors.
• No third-party tools. Notifications are sent through the app, displayed on the screen, and bring the user back into the app. A seamless experience with the product.
• Audience engagement. This applies both to existing users and those who have just installed the app on their smartphone. Notification – reaction – repeat.
• Cost-effectiveness, which comes from low costs of layout and sending messages, yet rather high returns.
• Conversions, meaning both activity within the app and commercial actions taken by the audience. For example, a purchase made with a discount that was just announced via a notification.

However, there is also a “flip side of the coin.” In particular, when an app excessively spams users with meaningless notifications, such behavior encourages them to delete it rather than take the suggested action or open the interface. There are also technical nuances, which we’ll cover a bit later.

Most often, the notification system in mobile products is configured using Firebase or Azure Notification Hub. At the same time, for iOS apps, a separate service is usually used – Apple Push Notification Service (APNs). And this:

• firstly, complicates cross-platform implementation of unified pushes;
• secondly, increases costs, as it requires separate integrations and synchronization – sometimes even manually.

In fact, this became one of the reasons why the owner of OSH requested to standardize the notification services for the target platforms, i.e., iOS and Android.

The task is clear and, in principle, not the most difficult. But quite meticulous in the context of configuring tags and types, classes of notifications. And the integration with administrative tools should not be forgotten either, as they must also support the same protocols as the OS, the app, the databases, etc.

But the first difficulty was migrating between services. From Azure Notification Hub to Firebase, to be exact. The reason? The notification cost was too high for such basic functionality.

The second difficulty was setting up the protocols and assigning the correct notification classes. But that’s more routine than a real challenge.

The third difficulty was unified notifications for all platforms. That is, adapting banners to the native design of operating systems, correctly assigning APIs, and so on.

Last but not least – the resilience and performance of the push system as a whole. For example, the need to send a critical notification to thousands of users at the same time.

How did we handle it? Easily. We simply sat down, worked, configured, tested, integrated. Yes, it took time, yes, it took effort. But the result is worth it!

Push notifications on their own are already a benefit for the client. And although they were there before, now they’ve taken on brighter colors. What does that mean? More detailed configuration of notifications and their navigational elements. And, ultimately, the possibility of personalization.

Now pushes are sent the way they should be: promotions separately, reminders separately, system-related messages also separately. As a result:

• User activity has improved. That is, it was found that the number of app launches triggered by notifications increased.
• User churn has decreased. Yes, once the pushes became categorized, fewer users started perceiving them as spam.
• Conversion has increased – both due to lower notification costs and the completion of target actions.

And if you think this case applies only to OSH – it doesn’t. Push notifications work with all types of apps, regardless of business niche, scale, etc,

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