Push Notifications

 Notifications on the other hand are certainly a way to drive people nuts.  YouTube is horrible about sending me notifications multiple times a day for things that I marginally care about.  (I uninstalled Facebook)  But why do I think these are a factor?  Push notifications are the single most powerful user engagement tool ever made.  After a certain amount of time we tend to stop using some of the apps on our phones.  I’ll prove it to you…

 Look at your phone right now.  Tap through all of the folders you’ve created, scroll through all of the screens of app icons that you have and look at all of the apps on your phone that you don’t use.  Why don’t you delete those?  Probably because you kinda liked it and you are afraid that if you delete it you may want to use it but can’t remember what it was called.  So you leave all of these things on your phone that you don’t use.  (I wrote this before Silicon Valley brought it up, but they noticed it too)

 What if I was one of those developers.  What if you used GhostTalk for a week or so, freaking yourself out with your friends around a camp fire and then you kinda stopped using it.  On to the next thing right?  But every now and then I send you a push, “Did you see the ghost dog video on YouTube? Join the chat to talk about it now!”.  And just like that you remember the app and it’s no longer completely forgotten.

 My approach to push notifications is that I only want to send messages that engage the users at the right time for them.  Those messages around lunch time?  I ignore those as well.  Send your notifications around 8pm or even 5am to catch people in the morning.  It depends on your app, but people are busy during the day so let them be busy and catch them when they are at rest.  The 5am notification may sound strange but most people have their phone on do not disturb while they sleep, so when they do wake up and your notification is there on their alarm clock screen you will be remembered.

 Also, make sure your notification provides some value to your user.  I will send notifications of seasonal sales for my affiliate products, full moon notifications to my ghost app users, unusual low fares for my flight alert users, etc.  Some of this is automated, but most if it takes a little bit of work to discover and schedule.

 One thing about notifications that I have noticed is that if I send a notifications immediately then go and watch the current count of active sessions, it always goes up.  If I send a push recommending one of my other apps, I can see new users show up in the other app’s current count.  Granted the second app only sees a small uptick but if you are launching a new app why not let your current users know and give it a kick start?

 The first thing on my list is to go into each app and make sure there is a StoreKit review request in each one.  This is especially important for the ones with low downloads.  The feedback might help explain what the problem is with the app, and it might also give it a boost in the store if the reviews turn out to be good!