Web push notifications for online stores: when they help and when they annoy
Where web push works, including on iPhone, how to ask for permission, which messages to send, how often and how to tell you've overdone it.
Vasile Dingă
.comparison-cards { display: flex; flex-direction: column; gap: 1.5rem; } .comparison-card { background: #fff; border-radius: 16px; padding: 20px; border: 2px solid #efefef; } .comparison-header { display: flex; justify-content: space-between; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 12px; } .comparison-row { display: flex; justify-content: space-between; padding: 8px 0; border-top: 1px solid #efefef; font-size: 14px; color: #1f2937; } .comparison-label { font-size: 14px; width: 30%; } .comparison-value { width: 65%; text-align: right; } @media (max-width: 600px) { .comparison-row { flex-direction: column; align-items: flex-start; } .comparison-value { text-align: left; margin-top: 4px; } } Web push notifications are the short messages a website sends to the screen of a phone or computer, even when the visitor no longer has the site open. For an online store they can be a good channel for urgent, personal things like "your product is back in stock" or "your order has shipped". They can also be the fastest way to annoy people, if the permission request pops up in the first second and messages arrive every day. Below I show where they work, including on iPhone, how to ask for permission, which messages are worth sending, how often, and how to tell you've overdone it. At the end there's a planner that builds a week's schedule for you. 1. What web push is and how it differs from email A web push notification relies on standards shared by browsers: a service worker (a small script running in the background), the Push API to receive the message and the Notifications API to display it. The visitor doesn't give you an email address or a phone number, only the browser's permission. What you get is a technical subscription tied to that browser on that device. That has three practical consequences: The message is very short: a title, one line of text, sometimes an image and a link. There's no room for arguments the way there is in an email. The subscriber is tied to a device: if…