Push Notifications: Staying up to date

Challenge. Our client would like to increase the traffic on their platforms where up to 50 brands are share their content (news, columns, long reads, videos, puzzles, and games). We’ve observed that the target audience was in need of a way to receive personalised notifications about very specific subjects and stay up to date during the day. Meanwhile we noticed that the user flows within the platforms could be improved and that supporting systems should be improved in order to achieve the client’s goal.

Value Delivered. In a cross-functional team of developers and product owners, we implemented various touch-points across the platforms to enable users to easily subscribe or unsubscribe from push notification categories. Simultaneously, we developed and integrated multiple systems and widgets into the editorial tools to streamline the configuration and management of push categories.

Approach. We always start with Design Thinking, beginning with a discovery phase where we review the current situation and compare it with benchmarks. We then ideate solutions, sketch, and prototype to validate assumptions. Finally, we scope, define, and plan which solutions to deliver first.

Insights. Our readers want to stay informed about the news of the day, not only to understand what is happening in the world but also for social purposes. During our user tests, we observed that they often become interested in specific topics while reading and would appreciate receiving notifications when more related news is posted.

Push categories. To help users receive notifications tailored to their personal interests, we designed a UI where, with a single action, they can enable notifications and then subscribe to multiple push categories across our client’s products. The biggest challenge was identifying the right ‘moment’ or touchpoint when users would be willing to subscribe to a push category.

We discovered that interest peaks within the article, specifically at the top header and around two-thirds of the way through. We then implemented this solution across 8 brands for both Android and iOS, in Light and Dark modes.

Service blueprint. This illustrates a simplified version of the architecture and which Product Teams are working on Editorial Systems and APIs, while separate Product Teams for platforms focus on developing services that empower editors to publish articles with their desired style, placement, and timing.

To implement the solution described earlier, these teams must align their roadmaps, collaborate closely, manage dependencies, and face other organizational challenges.

Editorial topics. We are developing an AI-powered widget positioned near the article that analyzes its content and identifies related topics from a database of editorial topics provided by our clients. These topics are all push categories that readers can subscribe to.

Next challenge. The next challenge is to provide Widgets and services that help our clients schedule, controle and/or automatically send push notifications without sending the same notification twice to the same reader.