PushEngage Review
Detailed Reviews
Push notifications is one of the ways how websites can earn engagement. Keeping this in mind, PushEngage is developed as software which can bring visitors to the website repeatedly. One of the main qualities of the application is its features which let you conduct analytics for different push notification widgets to identify the most suitable one.
Pros
- They offer fifteen days of free trial for all their plans.
- There is an AB notification feature which allows you to compare the engagement earned by two different notifications.
- You can choose to send the push notification according to the time zone of visitors from different countries.
- The application provides segmentation of website visitors according to geolocation, browser, URL, etc. which helps to conduct intense analytics.
- There is a beta feature, opt-in analytics, which finds the subscription rate by finding the difference between accepted and declined push notification subscription.
Cons
- One PushEngage account can only be used for five domains even if you purchase the premium plan.
- They can add a few more formatting options for subscribe widget and unsubscribe widget.
Getting started using the dashboard
Whenever you use an application for the first time, the biggest concern is- “how to get started?” Generally, the applications help you with the live chat or through the knowledgebase.
Still, understanding its usage would be facile when there is an inbuilt guide who would let know the task required to perform one after the another.
PushEngage doesn’t offer a full-fledged guide, but at least there is a list of tasks provided on the dashboard which you need to complete before anything else.
What if you do not move ahead according to the list? The application will not allow you to use all the features if tasks on the list aren’t done. This may annoy some of the users, but it is required to perform the first things first.
You first need to upload the site image: a small thumbnail which will appear on every push notification. That’s an important branding element, which if you do not add, may decrease the overall engagement.
The application asks you to choose a time zone which is necessary before scheduling the push notification.
For instance, you schedule a notification but have not set a time zone. In that case, the post will be uploaded according to PushEngage’s by default time zone. Due to this, you may get lesser views on the notification, and consequently, the clicks will be lesser as well. There is one way of solving this issue which we have mentioned in the managing notification section.
Before you explore every feature, it would be preferred if you embed PushEngage JavaScript on your website. After that, you can set a welcome notification and configure push subscription opt-in.
Now, you are ready to gather subscribers for your website with the help of push subscription window. There are many editing options related to the push notification which you can use to define the working of notifications.
The whole procedure is provided on the Getting Started Tasklist introduced by PushEngage on the dashboard. This is a fine implementation which would make it easier for anyone to get started.
What else you can find on the dashboard are the statistics rendering the information of the overall performance of the push notifications.
You can check the number of manual and auto-notifications sent in a week. The increment in the subscribers can also be found out.
Using the information of a total number of notification views and total clicks, it is possible to identify the click-through rate (click/view in percentage).
Better the click-through rate (CTR), more the engagement. Hence, whenever the performance of notification decreases, this will help you to know about the decrement.
This will indicate the necessity of changes according to which you can take further decisions. The same information is displayed through graphical representation as well. On the bottom, it will provide you details of recent notifications.
The Dashboard gives an overview of the working, but it doesn’t help to give a detailed insight. Perhaps, the company wished to keep it simple. However, if you want to go deeper, analytics is provided for that.
Creating a push notification
Push notification is the sole task of the application. Therefore, creating it must be effortless and time efficient.
In the case of PushEngage, you get the opportunity to edit most of the elements of a push notification. You can choose a different title as well as message every time whenever you create a push notification. They have also made a small improvement by adding an option to include emojis in title and message.
You obviously need to provide a destination URL which will lead a user to a decided page when he clicks on the notification.
If you do want to make it a multi-action notification, that’s also possible. You cannot add multiple URLs, but you can add buttons for whom you can provide respective URLs. While adding a button, you need to provide a title too. You can also add an image to it but not mandatorily.
You can also set UTM parameters to your push notification. In total, there are five UTM parameters out of which you can set three while creating a new push notification.
For instance, you upload a new article which contains a landing page’s link. Using UTM parameters, you can export the information to Google Analytics that how many people are reaching to that landing page using the added link.
After adding the content and images to your push notification, all you need to do is to schedule the notification. You can send it just after creating it or select a particular time.
In case you are not sure when you want to send it, you can also choose to just save it. The “expires in” option let you decide till what time, you wish to keep the notification alive.
Let’s say, you have set that the notification expires in one day. So, whoever has allowed you to send notifications, will be able to see that push notification for that one day. After that, it will not be visible as the expiration duration will be crossed.
Though the application has advanced linking and scheduling options, it disappointed us in case of appearance editing.
You can’t choose how your notification is going to look like. You can add images and content, but many more customization options are absent.
There is no option to edit the size of the image, color of the background, font for the text, etc. Thus, the application lacks the possibility of making your push notification unique.
Strict character limit is also placed for different text boxes. You can’t use more than forty-five characters for writing the title of the notification.
Similarly, the limit on message, button text, and UTM parameters is also placed. Thankfully, they have not placed such a limit of notification URL.
It is required to provide a limit or else the notification would look messy. However, choosing the length of content must depend on the user.
Also, they need to add some customization options so that push notification will look unique and thus, more appealing.
A/B Notification
Before discussing the efficiency of this feature, we must let the reader know what it is. And even before knowing its working, we must inform you that it is still in beta.
When you use this feature, two different notifications are generated (let’s say, A and B) and scheduled for the same time. Now, the application will send one of the two notifications to half of the subscribers and the other notification to remaining subscribers.
Now you can collect the data to compare the performance of both the push notifications. That will let you know which kind of notifications get higher engagement.
However, here, the limitation lies in the name itself. You can compare two notification but not more than that. If there were an option to compare three or more notifications, then it becomes easier and faster to detect appealing content.
One more shortcoming is unavailability of setting the number of users to whom we can send a notification. Both the notifications will reach an equal number of subscribers, and this can’t be altered.
Managing Notifications
After you create a push notification, it is important to place them under separate tabs depending upon the actions we take.
As we have already stated, you can choose to send the notification just after you create it, schedule it, or you can save it for that time.
Choosing any of these actions will place them under the separate tabs. Such separation is required to provide a user with complete details about the flow of notifications.
From the Sent tab, you can discover the total number of people who have received the push notifications. Out of these receivers, how many have clicked on them can also be identified. With the help of these two CTR is generated in the table.
One useful column with the title “unsubscribed” give us the count of viewers who unsubscribed to the push notification after clicking the link. Because of a particular notification, if you get a huge number of subscribers, you will know what kind of notifications you should not send any more.
But there isn’t any delete or edit option for the sent notifications. After you send a notification, you can not undo it or make any changes in it. When there is a negative impact of a notification, it would be beneficial that we remove it before it reaches other subscribers. However, this is not possible using PushEngage.
For the notifications which are placed in scheduled and draft section, you can edit them any time before sending.
For notification which is already sent, there is a display report option which wasn’t working for our case. Clicking on it shows processing, but it doesn’t lead to another screen.
There is an export option, too, which is working fine. You just need to click on it, and a CSV file containing all the details about the push notifications will be downloaded.
At last, there is a time zone analytics. For instance, you have scheduled a notification at 3:00 PM. You can choose that the receiver will receive it at 3:00 PM according to his time zone and not of yours.
This kind of push notifications are placed under a separate section, and even they are not editable. Therefore, you must be careful while scheduling them using this feature.
Customizing the subscription dialog box
How many times would it have happened with you that you visited a website, and a dialog box appears with the options to “Allow” and “Block” the notifications?
Most websites use push notification feature for earning engagement, and that’s why you come across push notification subscription dialog box.
Usually, people tend towards removing this dialog box straight away. You will not be able to send push notifications to a visitor who doesn’t click on Allow option. Thus, making it appealing is the first challenge.
There are numerous settings related to the dialog box. The first step is to choose the type of subscription dialog box.
There are six different designs available out of which you need to select one. The paid users can choose to remove the “Powered by PushEngage” tag which appears below the subscription box.
After selecting the design, you can go through the customization options provided. The basic options, such as button label, background color, and text color, are some obvious features present here.
You can also alter the time after which the website will show the subscription dialog box. You can also choose its position, different for desktop, and mobile phone.
In positioning, they do not allow you to give exact offset from any of the sides, which is one minor missing feature.
You can add a legal consent notice when the subscription box appears too. There are options to alter its background color and text color as well. For getting a better idea of how dialog box will appear, you can choose to view its preview. Moreover, you can also add the buttons through predefined button codes.
There is an exclusive feature- subscription opt-in analytics which is currently in beta. This option allows you to select various subscription widget popups and let you know that which received the highest engagement.
When you select different designs, in the report section, the application will show the number of visitors who have accepted the subscription and visitors who have declined it.
Using that data, you will find the subscription rate (accepted-declined), which can aid you to find a suitable widget for your push notifications.
These are all subscription settings offered by the application. In our opinion, these many options are satisfactory to create an acceptable subscription dialog box.
Installation on different websites & its settings
Installing the push notification JavaScript comes under the initial tasks which you need to perform before exploring any other feature.
While performing tasks according to the Getting Started Tasklist, we have already completed most of the installation-related tasks. However, it is required to discuss them in detail and let you know what you can edit using this installation tab.
You can add multiple domains and create and manage all push notifications through one account. For adding a new domain click on the hamburger button present on the top-right corner.
A panel will open containing the option to add a domain. There is also an option to reach account settings from there, which are the same as installation settings. This may confuse the user, and they should remove it for the sake of a simpler user interface.
The options to edit the site name, site URL, and site image can be edited through installation settings. We have followed the same step while getting started.
Now, let us provide you the information about the scripts that they provide depending upon the website types. For HTTP and HTTPS, the scripts are different. Thus, if your website has https protocol and you embed the script used for HTTP websites, then it is unlikely that it is going to work.
Other than these two options, you will also get different codes for Wordpress and Shopify. There is a website plugin available for HTTP Wordpress website. After you install that plugin, you don’t need to embed any code on the website. You are all set to go live.
The remaining option is of embedding PushEngage on Shopify. In the case of Shopify, PushEngage acts as an integration. If you have a Shopify account, just go to its app section and find PushEngage there. That’s what we have found through the application, but it isn’t true.
By conversing with the customer support, we came to know that PushEngage’s Plugin for Shopify is still in the validation process, and it is unavailable at this time when we are providing the review.
When we visited the integration page, we found out all websites where the product can be integrated. However, we can only provide the name of the platforms where the plugin is available: Wix, Slack, Magento, PrestaShop, Weebly, Zapier, and twelve more.
For some of these integrations, you may require an API key for security purpose. You can generate the API key through the settings. However, it must be kept safe as if anyone else gets his hands on it then he will be able to send push notifications to subscribers from any of the added domain.
For a website, where you do not find the plugin, you can always use the prewritten code to embed PushEngage.
From the installation settings, you can also set up a welcome notification whenever some subscribe to the push notification.
Sometimes, it may happen that push notification doesn’t appear on the screen of the user. In that case, a default notification can be set up. You can provide a title, description, and URL for that, but with strict character limits.
The option to change the time zone and edit the subscription dialog box also provides under the installation settings.
Adding an unsubscribe widget
After you add a subscription dialog box, it may also require you to add an unsubscribe dialog box. PushEngage houses that option and appropriate effort are provided on that too.
First of all, it is your choice to enable unsubscribe widget or not. Usually, one should enable it as it depends on visitor whether we wish to view the offers, content, and any other web page whose URL you sent him through the push notification.
After you enable it, it is also your decision that on which pages you want it to be visible on all the pages or only on selected pages.
For enabling the widget for selective pages, you need to select the custom options. Then a URL Pattern option will appear where you need to add the URL.
Along with the URL input box, there is a scroll bar which has three choices: Starts With, Exact Match, and Contains. It may look confusing which option should be selected but let us give you an example of this.
For instance, our website is pfind.com. When you select “Start With” option, all the URL which starts with pfind.com will be included. The “Exact Match” denotes the exact URL of the page. Selecting the third option “Contains” will include all the URL which has the added URL as part of their URL.
However, more options can be included here. For instance, if you select the “Exact Match” option, then it will be shown only on that one URL which matches exactly with the entered URL. For adding two exact URLs, there is no option provided.
On more thing, for excluding a few URLs out of all URLs is not possible as well.
There are two types of widgets provided. One is the button unsubscribe widget, and another is a bell unsubscribe widget.
For both, there is a good number of customization options. Although they both have the same goal, because of appearance, the customization options are different.
For the button shape, you can set a position, background color, and text color. Instead of text color, you can change the bell color in the bell-shaped widget.
In both the options, you can set an unsubscribe message and thank you message. When someone unsubscribes using button widget, he needs to confirm by selecting yes or no.
In case of bell widget, pressing bell will turn on and off the notification.
There are minor additions which could be implemented such as text font, size, the addition of images, etc. However, if the user chooses to stop the notifications, he will surely do it irrespective of appearance of the unsubscribing widget.
Privacy settings
If you wish to conduct analytics, you need to collect data about your customers. It is also possible that the collected data sensitive data such as geolocation.
You get the option to exclude yourself from collecting the geolocation. However, still, the device information and details such as browser, its version, and time when the user clicked the push notification will be collected.
If they are including privacy options, they should include a provision to eliminate collecting other details as well.
However, as they have not added any such feature, the information will be displayed in the analytics without choice.
As they are providing you the service, they do collect your data on various occasions. The option to delete the account is placed under the privacy settings. But they do not provide instant deletion of your account. It may take some time before all your information gets removed from their servers.
Automation Features
The application has made efforts to produce higher CTR using the analytical data and segments which we have created.
Using the Drip feature, we can send notifications to specific buyers by selecting a specific segment.
All you need to do is to select the segment created based on URL or according to the geolocation, provide UTM parameters for that, and add notification details. That’s a remarkable way to target the audience selectively.
You can also set cart abandonment push notification using the advanced API technique. All you need to do is to add the advanced API code, and whenever a person adds an item to a cart, he will be added to a particular segment.
Now, all the people who have added an item to the cart are added to this segment. They will get a push notification such as “the cart is waiting for the purchase!” So, after the notification, they may get back to their cart. That’s a very useful feature PushEngage has added for the e-commerce websites.
Similarly, push notifications can be sent to specific users who leave the website while browsing a particular page. Instead of the cart, you just need to add that webpage, and a message push notification message accordingly.
You can also generate Trigger Campaigns by just adding the conditions. For specific conditions, the application generates a specific code which you need to add to your website. Also, it is possible to set the frequency for it. After that, you can also generate analytics for those campaigns
RSS Auto Push is another automation feature that they offer. Suppose you have a blog where content regularly gets updated. So, every time content gets updated, you need to send a push notification for that.
PushEngage is designed to do that task for you. When you turn on the RSS auto push, the application will itself detect whenever there is an update and create a push notification for it.
Overall, looking over all the automation features, we can say that they significantly reduce the effort we need to make. Also, growing your website becomes easier. Thus, with no doubt, PushEngage has notable automation features.
Managing Segmentation and Analytics
The users can be segmented based upon their geolocation, device and browser type, URL, subscription date, and using advanced API.
The segmentation helps to provide better analytics. With various lists of buyers and interested buyers, the company will know where their market lies.
For country, browser, and device, there are predefined segments which are visible in the form of a pie chart in the manage segments window. The same segments are visible in subscribers statistics.
You can create a custom segment by using the “create customer segment” option present in the manage segments window. Just click on that option and provide a segment name.
After that, go to the automatic segmentation and “Create URL Pattern to Auto Segmentation.” Choose a particular name out of all segment names created and add an URL pattern. For adding a URL, pattern refers to the URL pattern added for the unsubscribe widget.
However, there is an option to exclude specific URLs, which makes it easier to create a highly specific segment.
Other than this, you can create segments using the date. It will not appear in the segmentation section, but you can create the segment using the “new notification” window. In the end, there are different advanced settings.
Under that, you can select a date based segment. When you need to send a push notification to the subscribers who subscribed to the push notification in a particular period, at that time, this option will be helpful.
However, you can select specific dates (for example, segment subscribers who subscribed on the 1st day of the month), but only choose an interval (ex: 1st May to 10th May).
Another method is to create segments using the advanced API. You need to embed a code on a particular webpage.
Whenever a visitor visits a particular page and conducts a particular action associated with that code, he will get segmented. You can even segment users who are subscribing to the push notification through by embedding code within the code of PushEngage’s subscription widget.
Based on these segmentations, you can analyze the information about the visitors finding and growing the user base.
In the analytics’ summary section, you will get an overview of the performance of your push notifications. You will know about the subscribes, unsubscribes, several notifications thought this section. You can also check the performance for a specific week and month.
Conclusion
PushEngage has an amazing interface where all the features are placed under well-defined sections. The learning curve may not be gentle due to the advanced features such as Drip, advanced API segmentation, RSS auto push, etc.
However, after you get familiar with all the functions of PushEngage, it will become effortless to create a push notification and conduct analytics for it.
There is a room for improvement, but even after that, currently, the application is acceptable for sure. However, if you are still confused, try there fifteen days of free trial available for any plan you select.