Notifications – The Do’s and Don’ts

At PlayIgnite – we see lots of great data points, which we like to share with you through our twitter feed. We do this on Fridays or on “Stat-urdays” (as we like to call it), and leave people to vote on which is the right answer to an interesting question. This is always followed by a big reveal of the correct answer. Last Friday’s question about notifications had such a big response, we thought we’d delve in to it further.

While notifications are a great way to engage with your players, did you know that 50% of people disable them immediately? There are ways to avoid the pitfalls, but what are they? Thanks to the guys at our sister publishing company, PlayStack, we have some great insights in this area. So we thought we would share them.

Push and local notifications are important – that’s a given. People have a vast array of apps and games on their phones, there’s a constant battle to make sure players do not forget about us.

Not only that, but push notification technology is important when advertising events and special offers. So in many ways, it’s an underappreciated feature of promoting your game, and re-engaging with your users. There’s an art to it.

The DO’s and DON’Ts?

DO NOT bring up a notification dialogue as soon as the game is opened, players have not had the chance to experience your game, why would you expect them to accept notifications?

DO NOT bring up the notifications dialogue if you feel there’s a decent chance that the player will say no. You only have one chance to prompt the user to accept notifications at which point you can only ask again if they uninstall and reinstall the game.

DO bring up the notifications dialogue when the player is in a positive frame of mind; e.g. just won something or just completed a level successfully.

DO bring up the notifications dialogue when there is a player ‘call to action’;
Example; ‘This chest unlocks in four hours; would you like to know when it’s ready to open?’ If the player answers YES, bring up the notification dialogue, if NO, don’t and try again later.

Then there’s what to do with asking people to connect via Facebook, or asking them to give your game a rating. But that’s a whole different topic for another time.

Do keep a lookout for our weekly stats on our Twitter, and if you have any interesting stats (we love all numbers!), or would like our insights about any topics, drop us a line at info@playignite.co.uk