Push notifications don't have to be so annoying — here's how

When did push notifications get such a bad rap?

There has been a fair amount of controversy lately around something that was once revolutionary for the smartphone user: the push notification. Some critics, like Farhad Manjoo of The New York Times, argue that the beeping and buzzing meant to alert you to important updates has turned into somewhat of an annoyance, and I can’t say I disagree.

It seems like every app today lights up your phone with another meaningless message, and these notifications are worse than an unhelpful email. For example, my favorite music streaming app sends me recommendations via push. But these recommendations are an annoyance in the morning when I’m tying my daughter’s shoes and my son is calling from across the house.

When overused, push notifications bother you, take up space in your taskbar and can be nothing more than a push to get you to open the app.

Users have certainly noticed the uptick in noise and have responded in a drastic way: by shutting it down entirely. One study notes that, on average, 60 percent of smartphone users are opting out of push notifications.

So it’s easy to see that today’s push notifications are part of a broken system.

However, from both a user and developer perspective, push notifications can serve as critical reminders — they’re just misused in today’s app marketplace. Yet they’re moving in the right direction, and iOS 8 will make notifications more pertinent, interactive, and useful.

So how can we redefine push notifications to make them beneficial to all parties? Here are a few recommendations:

First, push notifications should be used when something is urgent. At their core, after all, they are about interrupting your activity and demanding your immediate attention. Therefore, the only kind of notifications you should be getting are the essential ones worthy of an interruption.

Even those people who usually disable push can think of an instance when a notification saved the day, or at least made it a little bit easier. For example, the standard ten minute reminder for a meeting you had forgotten about.

Second, push should be personal. Part of the reason users are abandoning ship is not because they hate the practice entirely; it’s because they’re being spammed with mass-market notifications. App developers should focus on updates that are specific to the user.

Of course users want a notification saying that their flight time has changed, but do they really want the buzz in the middle of the night asking them to rate the new app version?

Third, push notifications should provide information in the notification. From a news headline to contact details, the notification shouldn’t be just a ploy to drive users to the app. If something is urgent enough to bother a user, the deliverable should be right up front. If the user wants more information, like to read the full story from a breaking news alert, he or she can open the app to get context.

In our eyes, the perfect push notification is a miniature brief with essential information — nothing more, nothing less. A great example is Google Now, which sends a push notification when you need to leave to make it to an event on time. By syncing with your calendar and checking traffic, it lets users skip the step of monitoring the time, checking traffic and plotting a route. All the information is at users’ fingertips when they swipe down from the top of their screens.

We try to implement this strategy to create the best possible notifications at Refresh. We send push notifications with a contact’s background and suggested talking points right before you’re scheduled to see them. People don’t even have to open the app to figure out who they’re meeting and how to connect with them.

It’s time for app developers to wise up and reexamine the way they’re using push. My advice: don’t bother your users if it’s not important, make it personal, and provide information up front. After all, the point is for companies to anticipate users’ needs and address them with the swipe of a finger. And users, it might just be time to give push notifications another chance.

Bhavin Shah is the CEO and co-founder of Refresh, an iOS and web app that finds common ground with the people you meet. Bhavin has over a decade of experience building companies, and has taken companies in the education, toy and video game industries from inception to scale and from private to public. He was a co-founder and COO at Gazillion Entertainment, which grew to over 150 employees, and was the Director of Business Development at Leapfrog. He holds numerous patents on learning and incentive systems, and was the director of NASA’s EarthKam program.