Creating engaging content recurrently is not enough when you are looking for a viable number of audiences on your website. However, it is no easy task to engage people to come back time after time on your page.
This a more practical way to market your content, and has undoubtedly gained popularity in recent years. Most of these webpreneurs use these plugins to:
Capture Audience
Increase Return Visitors
Get Increased CTR and Engagements Vs Typical Newsletter Signups
Let’s dig a bit deeper and know what these push notifications are, how they work and what their upsides include.
5 Simple Tips For WordPress Beginners
Benefits of WordPress Push Notifications
WordPress Push Notifications lets you conveniently reach out to your readers regardless of their whereabouts. Even when they are scrolling on the web, your notification will pop up on their screens.
Some major and dominant benefits these push notifications hold are:
- Alert subscribers of any newly published blog post
- Send out coupons and deals if you’re selling a product
- Promote new product/feature releases
- The option to opt-in and out
- Entail lesser attention than an email
- Effective in diverting subscribers
However, moderation is the key feature here as frequent notifications may avoid a few subscribers.
How to Set Up Web Push Notifications in WordPress?
One of the popular push notification settings for WordPress can be performed using OneSignal plugin. This a free plugin service that enables notifications to mobile apps or web.
OneSignal Setup
- Initiate the OneSignal plugin after installation.
- Below the WordPress admin bar, you will see the OneSignal menu item after the plugin is activated.
- Open the plugin’s setting page by clicking the icon.
You will see the tabs of Setup and Configuration in the settings page.
These tabs include thorough credentials on how to setup OneSignal push notifications in WordPress. On the plugin settings, add API keys and application IDs. To configure the plugin further, follow the steps mentioned below.
Step 1: Setting up Push Notifications for Chrome and Firefox
- Create a free account by visiting the OneSignal website.
- Login to your account and click on Add a New App and enter App Name.
- After adding the name of your app, click on the Create button.
- In the platform to configure option, choose Website Push. Then, click Next.
- Click next after choosing the Web Push box in the browser platform.
- On the next screen, choose WordPress plugin or Website Builder—select WordPress.
- Scroll below to add necessary details like site name and site URL.
- Adjacent to My Site Is Not Fully HTTPS option, check that box in case your webpage is not supporting SSL/HTTPS. Nonetheless, it is not mandatory.
- Exit the current dialog box by clicking Save. Click Yes when the dialog box of incomplete setup appears.
Next, you will be provided the App ID and the API Key that would be used in setting up the OneSignal WordPress plugin.
Step 2: Getting OneSignal Keys
- In your app dashboard, click App Settings.
- From the app settings page that appears next, click on the Keys & IDs tab.
- Paste the OneSignal App ID and Rest API Key appearing on your screen, to the configuration tab of the OneSignal WordPress plugin.
Step 3: Setting up Safari Web Push Notifications
- Move to your App Settings page after logging in to your OneSignal account.
- After scrolling down to web platforms, click on Configure, next to Apple Safari
- In the dialog box that appears next, enter the site name and URL.
- Next to ‘I’d like to upload my own notification icons’ option, check the box.
- From the given options to upload different icon sizes, upload all your icons by clicking, Choose File buttons.
- Close dialog box after clicking Save.
- Refresh the page before scrolling below to the Web Platforms section. Web ID will appear under Apple Safari.
- Paste the Web ID to the Configuration tab of the OneSignal plugin.
Finish these steps and the push notifications for your WordPress site has been configured successfully.
Step 4. Testing push notifications on your WordPress site
By default, the OneSignal plugin will add a subscription icon to your WordPress site. Follow these steps to initiate the test of the web push notifications on your WordPress site:
- In a supported browser, visit your WordPress site and click on the subscribe button. On the screen, a default, Thank You for Subscribing message will appear.
- After logging in to your OneSignal account, in the App Settings tab, click on your app name.
Scroll below to the web platform section. Next, to the Firefox and Google Chrome options, click on Configure. - On the platform configuration screen that appears next, click Save and Continue.
- Select the target SDK.
- Select WordPress. Click Next. Since you will have a single subscriber, your subscriber ID will be filled automatically.
- To open the Test Settings section, click Next.
- Click on Send Test Notification.
- You will receive a web push notification from OneSignal. Depending on the web browser you opted for, the notification may differ.
- After clicking on the notification that will appear on the screen, a confirmation message will appear. The message will inform about the successful OneSignal web push notifications set up.
- Click on the Check Notification Status button after returning to the OneSignal webpage configure screen. This will generate another message informing you about the successfully added web push notifications to your WordPress site.
Casing Gears Up!
If you are looking for a way to stay in touch with the visitors of your site visitors, then there isn’t a better option than WordPress push notifications. With the facility of consent, you can be certain that the subscribers are actually the individuals who are interested in what you are doing.
Author: Syed Qasim Abbas is a digital marketing consultant at PressTigers. PressTigers is a well-known WordPress development company. You can hire a WordPress developer from PressTigers who can help you in setting up the push notification for your WordPress website.
