Written by Cherilyn 2022 Cohort
In the digital age, I’m sure that most people know what notifications are. If you use a smartphone daily, you see it without fail. It is a powerful tool to introduce users to new features and updates, send them the app crashes, and inform them about new messages and emails from their friends. Marketings view that it helps them promote engagement and connects with users who have abandoned applications.
However, notifications are a double-edged sword. Even though they come in handy, they can affect the user experience negatively if having poor and improper design. Research has shown that annoying and too many notifications are the first reason why people uninstall mobile applications (71% of the respondents confirmed this in a surveying study).
What should we do to design meaningful notifications without compromising the user experience while using our mobile applications? Let’s dig a bit deeper into the topic!
- Classify the critical levels of your message
You need to consider each message, including warnings, alerts, errors, success messages, confirmations, or status indicators, if they need more or less attention. Then divide them into three levels high, medium, and low alert, depending on their importance. Moreover, each of those groups needs to be defined by specific styles to distinguish them and make it more apparent to users when they receive the messages.
- Give users the control
The wrong-time notifications are very annoying. Giving users the flexibility to turn on and off all, or at least some of the notifications, is an excellent idea. Moreover, a schedule setting feature is also a good choice to lets users set a convenient time to receive the messages.
- Group multiple notifications
To make it straightforward for users, all types of multiple notifications should be summarized into a group and highlighted only the most important message. For instance, a podcasts app should show only a summary notification with “10 more episodes” instead of sending every episode to users separately.
- Make an A/B testing plan
Testing is the best way to improve your mobile apps after collecting user feedback. A/B testing is one of the best plans in that you can let users compare different versions of your prototypes and ask them to choose one that performs better for them.