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When designing a product, it's important to consider how it will interact with the people using it. Users appreciate it when the product clearly tells them what needs their attention. Notifications offer an opportunity for company’s to communicate to their users, make announcements, and drive engagement.
Push notifications work best if they don't impact your user experience. Learn more with TopTal's Guide to Notification Design.
Learn about different ways to notify your users. From level of importance to how you deliver app notifications. Develop a mobile notification framework that is engaging for your users.
How to prioritize app notifications
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When crafting notifications its important to consider the level of importance for your users, your business, and the urgency with which you want a user to respond. Generally I like to set a 3-tiered severity framework: Vital, Preventative, & Informative notifications.
What is a vital notification and how are they treated?
Vital notifications are the top priority for users and businesses. These are messages that need immediate attention. Whether it be part of a workflow, process, or the user's account status.
Some examples of vital notifications:
Subscription issues - A user’s account is at risk because of payment or subscription issues
Subscription changes - A billing increase because a user made changes to their subscription. This issue requires immediate attention to keep user trust.
Unexpected issues - Any data or workflow issues that would lead to a bad user experience.
Destructive feedback - Conveying the act of deleting, destroying, or removing data with a confirmation mechanism
Designing a vital notification:
UI Design - Use of red to pull the viewer’s focus
UX Design - Grabs the user’s focus until the issue is resolved
Note - Be careful when ranking vital notifications marketing messages or alerts with vital messaging can lead to notification blindness.
Vital Notification Delivery methods
Send push notifications - Messaging on an app user’s device that brings them back into a product experience. Consider developing a deep-linking strategy to help users quickly resolve issues.
Modals - A modal, also known as a dialog or popup. When creating a modal think about users should do next. Should it stop them from taking other actions, inform them, or remind users of an action.
Banners - Message that stay visible on the user interface. Consider where to put banners so they are visible and grab user attention.
Email - Consider emailing users and using the subject message to indicate the urgency of a message. Email is an easy way to reach users without them being active in your product.
How to warn users about things that aren't vital?
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Preventative notifications are messages that let users know about problems that might happen in the future. This includes: telling users about potential issues, explaining how to fix issues, and letting user mark issues as fixed.
Some examples of preventative notifications:
Subscription changes - Tell users about changes that are coming soon, even if they won't impact them right away.
Requesting user review - Notify a user of something that isn't urgent but needs their attention.
Warning feedback - Communicating that something may not operate as intended, where the user is able to override the system. Note that in some cases a warning may lead to a vital issue, upgrading its severity.
Designing a preventative notification:
UI Design - Use of yellow or orange to pull the viewer’s focus
UX Design - Notify users of the necessary alert with steps to recognize, diagnose, and recover from issues.
Preventative Notification Delivery methods -
Banners - Show users the status of their app with a way to dismiss or fix non-urgent issues.
Modals - Show a message to users when they sign in, take an action, or navigate to a certain screen.
Email - Send a message to your user's account email to communicate issues. Emails are good types of notifications for issues that aren't vital yet.
What is an informative notification and how are they treated?
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Informative notifications let you confirm a user action, inform users, or ask questions. Think of informative notifications as user feedback that communicates the successful completion of an action, descriptions, and added value.
Some Examples of Informative Notifications:
Success messages - Tells users that they made a change successfully.
Description/Elaboration - Explains a concept or value about part of the product.
Feature-gating - Shows users features or benefits are available on upgrade.
Designing an Informative Notification:
UI Design - Use your brand to let users address informative messages at their own pace.
UX Design - Design informative notifications in a way that doesn't block or distract users from what they are doing.
Ways to Deliver Informative Notifications -
Banners - Show users the a message in their app with a way to dismiss messages.
Modals (use sparingly) - Communicating new features, product changes, or educational content in relation to a flow.
Tooltips - A hover-able element that that explains part of a user interface/feature.
Surveys - A request for users to fill out information in relation to your brand or product offering.
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Consider the best notification cadence for your users
When sending messages to users, think about how often you send notifications. Instead of sending messages right away, try waiting a bit and grouping them together. Some apps might push messages immediately, but it may be better to wait in other cases. Sometimes things change quickly, and sending too many notifications can be overwhelming.
How to provide controls to users
Remember to build a notification center for your users. This let's your users define what types of push notifications and emails they get from your app. Otherwise users may turn off notifications limiting your ability to engage with them.
Think about notifications for different platforms. Use web push notifications for vital issues. Mobile device push notification services present as banners, lock screen messages, or badge app icons. Give users control over notification settings to improve engagement.
In conclusion
Think about the benefits of push notifications. Build a strategy around keeping people engaged and informed.
Choosing the right delivery method for each type of notification is equally important. This framework serves as a foundation that your product can use to craft your notification strategy. Measure your user engagement, optimize based on your audience, and find what works best for you.