What are push notifications?

Push Notifications

The beginnings of push notifications go back to the beginning of the millennium when the company Research In Motion, in agreement with the manufacturer of cell phones BlackBerry, changed completely, from that moment and forever, the way to receive notifications. At the time, it was called "Push Services", becoming the first email notifications service and causing a revolution that made BlackBerry the absolute owner of the mobile device market for many years. With this new technology, the user received a notification every time an email arrived, without having to constantly check his inbox to check if he had new messages, as was usually done up to that moment.

The response of the competition came in 2009, when Apple introduced APNS (Apple Push Notification Service) in its version 3.0 of iOS. This service allowed users to receive notifications from both emails and cell phone applications. This became the standard with which users interact with any event, news or notification in general.

Google was the one who opened the way for web browsers to receive push notifications. As of 2013, through Google Cloud Messaging, the Chrome browser would begin to manage the same push notifications that were a success in mobile phones.

Technology behind notifications

OneSignal is a high-volume push notification service, reliable and easy to implement for websites and mobile applications. It supports all major native and mobile platforms by providing dedicated SDKs for each platform, a RESTful API and an online administration panel to design, analyze, manage and send automatic notifications.

Some of the multiple benefits it offers are:

  • Easy to use: The implementation of reliable interfaces for the GCM / FCM (Google), APNS (Apple) and Web Push protocols is difficult. There are open source projects to do it, but even the best ones break when the number of messages starts to exceed 500,000 at a time.
  • Better than the competition: Other notification services lack features such as segmentation, automatic / activated notifications, variable substitution, a notification delivery API or detailed reporting tools. In addition, other services often offer low quality or outdated SDKs that are not compatible with the new features of the platform in which they are implemented.
  • Advanced functionality: Provides marketing tools that include A / B testing, segment segmentation, variable substitution, localization, drip marketing and conversion tracking.
  • Platform support: Provides a single user interface and API to send messages through iOS, Android, Amazon Fire, Windows Phone, Chrome applications, Amazon Alexa, Safari, Chrome Web and Firefox.
  • SDK Support: Provides SDKs for almost all major multi-platform mobile development environments, including Unity, PhoneGap, Cordova, Ionic, Native React, Intel XDK, Corona, Xamarin, Marmalade, Adobe Air and Web Push.
  • Popularity: It is the most popular push notification service for web and mobile developers, with more than 325,000 registered developers and 175,000 applications and websites.
  • Free: Best of all, OneSignal is a free service that supports devices and unlimited notifications. It also offers payment service options for customers that require more data privacy.

Module for PrestaShop

PrestaShop stands out in the broad spectrum of e-commerce platforms. Popular system that has +250 thousand online stores assembled in more than 160 countries and 65 languages ​​around the world.

Web Browser Push Notifications using OneSignal for PrestaShop is a module completely focused on increasing conversions within each e-commerce site in which it is installed, allowing the seller to easily connect with their customers in real time by opening a new channel of marketing. The development of this module is based on the sending, by the merchant, of push notifications to the customers of the store using the benefits of the OneSignal platform.

The functionalities that the module provides are:

  • Automatic notifications of relevant events: These notifications are activated automatically whenever one of the following events occurs:
    1. Payment of the accepted order
    2. Order preparation in progress
    3. Registered tracking number
    4. Order sent
    5. Order delivered
    6. Canceled order
    7. Reply to the customer's message
    8. Coupon generated
    9. Availability of the product
  • Personalized notifications per campaign: These notifications are generated in a personalized way and can be directed to a specific audience of clients or guests thanks to the great diversity of available filters. They can also be scheduled to be sent at a specific date and time. The list of available filters includes:
    1. Specific customers by name or email.
    2. Include guests
    3. Device with which you subscribed.
    4. Platform with which you subscribed.
    5. Last date it was active.
    6. Number of sessions registered in your store.
    7. Groups of clients
    8. Registered or not to the newsletter.
    9. Registered or not to the Opt-in.
    10. Gender.
    11. Total amount purchased in the store.
    12. Total amount of products purchased in the store.
    13. Position in the ranking of the best clients.
    14. Total number of valid orders.
    15. If you have purchased a certain quantity of a specific product.
    16. If you have purchased a certain amount from a specific category.
    17. If you have purchased a certain quantity from a specific manufacturer.
    18. Payment methods used.
    19. Carriers used.
    20. Coins used.
    21. Abandoned carts with a certain time and amount.
    22. From a certain date of registration to the store.
    23. Until a certain date of registration to the store.
    24. Preferred language of the client.
    25. Country of origin.
    26. Store (in case of using multi-store).
  • Notifications for abandoned carts: These notifications will be sent to customers who have abandoned carts that meet the configured conditions. You can also optionally generate a discount coupon to use in that cart. Among other options, you can configure:
    1. Time elapsed since the cart was abandoned.
    2. Minimum amount of the cart.
    3. Time elapsed since the sending of the previous notification of abandoned cart.
    4. If you want to generate a discount coupon or not.
    5. Validity time of the discount coupon generated.
    6. Minimum amount of the cart to apply the coupon, including or not taxes and shipping costs.
    7. Amount or percentage of the discount.
    8. If free shipping will apply

Other features

  1. Welcome notification configuration or thanks for accepting to receive notifications.
  2. Configuration for personalization of the visual effects of the notifications.
  3. URL for configuration of scheduled tasks.
  4. Option to clean outdated notification records depending on their current status and date of creation.
  5. Administration panel for notifications, subscribers and notification campaigns.
  6. Log of error log.
  7. Detailed documentation

This module is a fundamental communication tool for any online store, boosting sales and allowing the creation of new marketing strategies can be segmented for specific audiences.

It should be noted that the module developed by Rolige, a company with consolidated participation and prestige in the development for PrestaShop, is validated by PrestaShop Addons and available for versions 1.6 - 1.7 of PrestaShop.

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