So you have a website and your building an email list. Great job but what if you could supercharge your list building?
Now you can with website push notifications. Let me explain…
[responsive_video type='youtube' hide_related='1′ hide_logo='1′ hide_controls='0′ hide_title='0′ hide_fullscreen='0′ autoplay='0′]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-GfuLNNcPk[/responsive_video]
If you're using a smartphone there is a 99% chance you have seen a push notification from your favorite apps. On the iphone it looks like the screenshot below. So what do push notifications have to do with your website? Well push notifications have evolved and up until recently only big companies could do browser push notifications but now you can implement them on your own website.
A few months back I saw a trend with one major marketing blog (Quickspout) that started using browser push notifications and then many other major players followed suit. As soon as I saw this on Neil’s blog I knew that I had to bust out with this new technology but there was one big problem –
I am just a marketer and not a programmer. I don’t know how this technology works and even more so the issue of how to implement this technology since I would imagine it’s complex.
After doing a bunch of research on how the technology works and then researching different service providers I finally hit the jackpot and came across a push notifications web app called PushCrew. It’s surprisingly easy to implement this solution and have wordpress push notifications going in less than 10 minutes. I’m going to show you how to setup your account step by step but here’s a great overview video.
[responsive_video type='youtube' hide_related='1′ hide_logo='1′ hide_controls='0′ hide_title='0′ hide_fullscreen='0′ autoplay='0′]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5ERbgIioew&feature=youtu.be[/responsive_video]
Step 1: Signup for the Free Account
Go to pushcrew.com and signup for the “PushCrew Free” account which gives you the ability to send notifications to 500 subscribers. Once you hit that cap you can upgrade to the PushCrew Premium account which allows you to send notifications to 2,000 subscribers.
Step 2: Integrate with your Website
Installing website push notifications depends on whether your site is using HTTP or HTTPS. I am using HTTPS on prestonscorner.com and have been ever since google dropped some hints back in 2014. “Even SEO guru Brian Dean agrees. If you check out his list of Google’s 200 ranking factors it’s #71 on the list.
Since my website is using HTTPS the service operates a bit cleaner but you can still use this is you are only using HTTP. Here are the two possible install situations depending on how your site is setup.
Check out the Install Guide on HTTP sites here.
Check out the Install Guide on HTTPS sites here.
I have to admit that I like the look of the https version compared to the http version.
Step 3: Login and Start Sending Push Notifications
Once you have everything setup on your website it's time to start sending push notifications. You can schedule basic notifications by following the steps below.
Conclusion
So there you have it! Now you can utilize website push notifications on your own site. Let me know how it goes and if you have any questions please leave a comment.
