Online stores are increasingly using web push notifications to keep their existing customers and subscribers engaged. The instant delivery of these messages and their immediate consumption is what makes them effective. While the obvious results are higher conversions and sales for an online store, let’s take a look at how they affect customer demand.
What are web push notifications?
Web push notifications are messages that an online store can send to its customers and subscribers on the desktop and mobile web. They appear either at the top or bottom of the desktop screen, depending on the operating system. But look pretty similar to the regular app notifications on mobile apps.
To help you visualize them better, here’s how they look on a Windows desktop:
Here’s how they appear on mobile devices:
Web push notifications are gaining popularity as they make it easy for shoppers to subscribe to updates – without sharing their email addresses. Business favour this communication channel because it lets them reach shoppers even when they are not on the site!
What additionally makes them a hit is that there apps like PushOwl that help you get started with them in minutes. Be it a cart recovery campaign, a back in stock update or price drop alert, all you’re required to do is pick a campaign goal, a template and then just focus on creating a web push copy that makes visitors want to engage with it!
Now there are many smart ways to use web push notifications. It’s a direct communication channel that you can use to increase customer engagement, drive higher conversions and sales.
But let’s take a step back to see how they first affect customer demand, which can help you understand how you can increase your conversion rate without forcing promotions to your shoppers.
By predicting and understanding customer demand, you can easily set up push notifications that cater to your shoppers’ needs, convert with ease, and even ensure your low-selling products move out of the warehouse faster.
We’ve broken the below section into three parts based on the status of your inventory – when you simply want to maintain a consistent in-flow of shoppers, when your inventory is running low, and when you restock!
Using web push notifications to stimulate customer demand
When you want to maintain customer demand
1. Promote your well-stocked products
There’s always one or two items in your inventory that doesn’t sell out fast enough. If you’re dealing with too much inventory, don’t stress. Instead, use web push notifications to drive more traffic to this range. Highlight the product features and benefits to make subscribers want to purchase them. Always add an enticing product image to compel shoppers to click through.
2. Give your popular products more attention
Bring your high value, high profit, and fastest selling products into the limelight. When you recognize that a product is selling well, you can use this interest to increase your purchases for the item easily. Generate more demand for your popular products with web push notifications. Use your push notification copy to explain why this product is selling out and make subscribers want to purchase it too!
3. Build a buzz around to-be-launched products
If your store is launching a new range of products, you can use web push notifications to spread the word. Release weekly sneak peeks into the new products to keep your shoppers hooked. By increasing customer demand for your new product, you can maximize its visibility and have a great launch week.
4. Share customer reviews to validate products
Is there a product range that often struggles to sell? Use customer testimonials and reviews within your web push notification copy to give the product a much needed boost. Show subscribers how many existing customers love your product to nudge them to make a purchase.
When your inventory is running low
1. Create urgency around popular products
The moment your inventory on popular products goes low, use it as a chance to drive more shoppers to the store. Remind your shoppers about the low stock and push them to purchase faster. This urgency you add around your low stock product can help you bag your final sales. Once it sells out, you can use this as a chance to promote a similar range.
2. Turn wishlists into completed carts
Don’t let your shopper’s wishlists lie redundant. The moment the inventory on any of the products goes low, ensure that you have set up triggered web push notifications nudge the shopper to take their wishlisted items to their cart. Set up a low stock alert push notification with Shopify Flow to create FOMO, and successfully turn wishlists into successful sales.
When your inventory is restocked
1. Send back-in-stock alerts
When your product inventory is restocked, engage shoppers who previously expressed interest in them. To ensure you don’t miss out on a chance to bag a sale, automate your back-in-stock alerts. PushOwl’s Back in Stock alert allows shoppers to opt in for products that are out of stock. This way, you can ensure you don’t lose out on sales just because a product was out of stock.
Alternatively, you can notify all your shoppers about the fresh stock on your best sellers or top picks for the week to create more demand around them.
When you track customer activity
If you’ve been tracking an online shopper’s activity on your store, it’s time to put that data to use. Create more buzz and demand around products that your shopper is showing interest in. You can easily turn this interest into successful sales with web push notifications.
1. Use on-site triggers to nudge purchases
Using Fera.ai, you can set up on-site push notifications. With these messages, you can trigger a notification offering special discounts on the product a shopper is viewing. With these on-site messages, you can ensure that you are engaging your shopper while they are still on your store, and even set up an exit intent to ensure they don’t leave empty-handed. Read more here.
2. Send out wishlist updates to engage shoppers
Wishlists are a great way for shoppers to save a product they are interested in and come back later to purchase. But, it’s just as important for businesses to leverage this customer behaviour to promote and nudge the wishlisted items into the shopper’s cart. Integrate with Growave to send wishlist updates to shoppers.
Generating more customer demand with web push notifications
The real-time delivery of promotions and instant viewership of your web push notifications is sure to help you generate more customer demand around products.
But just like any other marketing channel, web push notifications too, need to be strategized.
You need to take into account who your shoppers are, their purchase behavior, how they interact with your online store and what they’re interested in. The closer you are to understanding what will interest them, the greater will be the demand you can generate on relevant products.
After this, you need to continually test and monitor the performance of your web push notification campaigns. Fluctuate the frequency at which you are sending out push messages, change the tone of voice you use or simply play with the discounts you offer to see what gets shoppers to interact with your store.
What might work for one store, may not work for another! So trust your own data.
Have you used web push notifications to generate more demand around your product yet?
About the author
Vanhishikha Bhargava is the Content Marketer at PushOwl, a Shopify app that enables online stores to send web push notifications. When she’s not looking for growth strategies, you can find her blogging on marketing. You can connect with her on LinkedIn or follow her blogs here.