Signs it is time to revisit push notifications
It is rarely the thing that gets a project approved, and often the thing that decides how it goes. A few signals that push notifications is due some attention.
Mobile releases are slower to correct than web ones, so the cost of shipping a mistake is higher. Write the reasoning down alongside the decision, because the reasoning is what changes first.
The signals
- Nobody can say when it was last reviewed
- The answer depends on who you ask
- Permission is granted once and revoked forever
- Notify about things people asked for, not things you want to say
How to approach it
Deep link into the exact screen the notification is about. That sounds obvious written down. It is still the thing most often skipped. If it only works because one person remembers to do something, it does not work yet.
What this looks like day to day
You do not control the device, the network, or the operating system version, and the design has to accept that. Three things worth confirming about push notifications before you move on:
- Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
- Notify about things people asked for, not things you want to say — and you know whether that is true here
- There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped
If you are not sure where your systems currently stand on this, it takes us about an hour to find out.