With businesses being digitized, sending web push notifications is considered one of the best re-engagement strategies used by marketers to improve customer engagement, reduce churn rates, and maximize conversions on the online store. However, with more and more websites implementing push notifications, the number of people who actually subscribe to your notifications and engage with your site's content is decreasing.

Additionally, bombarding users with unsolicited and irrelevant prompts has become a common complaint rather than an important communication channel, as many websites request notification permissions on the first visit, instead of letting users explore the site. This often interrupts their workflow, and results in a bad user experience while leading users to instantly block your website notification prompts without a second thought.  

To protect your opt-in or subscription prompts from being blocked at the first visit, and to make the user's browsing experience seamless on your website, browsers like Google Chrome, FireFox, and Safari have come up with a new update to their notification settings known as Quieter Notification Prompts. 

As the name suggests, Quieter Notification Prompts is an interface designed to alert users that a web push notification from a website has been automatically hidden or silenced on their web browser without interrupting users normal workflow. This setup will automatically display a "notification blocked" text that slides out for a brief time in your address bar. Viewers can also unblock and view it at any time, as necessary.

 

How and when is the quieter notification prompt implemented in different browsers?

1. Google Chrome changes: For Google Chrome version 80 and above (both desktop and Android) browsers, quieter notification prompts will be implemented for users in two situations:
   
1. Users who consistently click Block or Deny on annoying websites.
   
2. Websites with low opt-in rates.

1. Mozilla Firefox changes: From Mozilla Firefox version 72 and above, the desktop browser will no longer show native opt-in prompts unless the user has interacted (performed a tap or click on a page) with the website earlier. In this case, the quiet notifications on the Firefox browser will appear as follows:
   
   
   
   
2. Safari Changes: Similar to the Firefox broswer, from macOS Safari version 12.1 and above, the browser will not show the quieter notification prompt unless the user interacts (clicks a button or performs some action on the page) with a website before the permission prompt is shown. The quiet notifications on the Safari browser will appear as follows:
   

Now how PageSense deals with quieter notification prompts for web push notifications?

To help increase the engagement towards your push messages and to ensure that visitors coming to your site do not block your push notifications right at first sight, we recommend you to implement the two-step opt-in set up to let visitors subscribe to your notifications.

The two-step opt-ins in PageSense let you display a customized notification prompt to readers in order to help them understand the context and benefit of receiving your message, before actually prompting for the permission. This approach makes sure that the users act more consciously when agreeing to hear from you and do not accidentally click Allow or Deny in the subscription box. This also ensures that notification prompts do not go silenced from your end and safeguards your website from being penalized by web browsers even if users decide not to opt-in you.

Look at the image below to understand how two-step opt-in is displayed on the web browser:

In summary, contrary to the major concerns you might have with quieter notification prompts like decreased opt-in rates and subscribers list to your push notifications, the new browser update of quieter notifications brings several benefits to your overall marketing efforts, including:

• An improved user browsing experience
  

• An increase in push notification CTRs
  

• A reduction in first-time “block” of opt-ins
  

• Increased user engagement.