Send Push Notifications from a PrestaShop Store

Imagine skyrocketing your PrestaShop store's engagement rates overnight. 

You know the struggle of keeping customers hooked, but with the right tools, it's possible. 

Push notifications, both through native apps and web browsers, are definitely one for your toolbox. 

In this article we’ll explain why. We’ll look at how push notifications work, how to get them set up for PrestaShop, and how to work them into your overall strategy. 

Let’s get started. 

Benefits of Push Notifications for Prestashop Stores

Push notifications are the secret weapon of many leading eCommerce brands. They’re amazing for driving traffic and sales, building deeper relationships with customers, recovering abandoned carts, and more!

The best thing about them is their immediacy.

‍They’re right there, in the lock screen that customers over 140 times every day.

Compared to email, PPC, even SMS - they’re difficult to ignore. 

Here are a few of the qualities that make push notifications so powerful:

• Instant communication: deliver messages in real-time, keep your customers informed about the latest deals and product launches
• Higher visibility: unlike emails that can get buried in an inbox, push notifications take center stage with extremely high open rates
• Conversion boosting: push notifications are great for nudging customers to complete purchases and recover abandoned carts
• Cost-Effective: compared to other marketing tools, push is cheaper and easier to set up

Simply put, push is a gamechanger. 

Once you’re set up you can send as many notifications as you like, and see the immediate boost to your core metrics. 

Here’s a taste of the kind of notifications you can send:

• Abandoned Cart Reminders: abandoned carts are a huge loss. With push notifications personalized with the customer’s name and abandoned items, sent within an hour of cart abandonment, you can potentially recover more than 20%!
• Exclusive Discounts and Promotions: push is the perfect channel to drive traffic to your special offers and promote exclusive offers to loyal customers
• Product Launches and Updates: push works great for keeping your brand top-of-mind and informing customers of important updates   

Push is the perfect channel to connect, engage, and sell. 

Now, there are two kinds of push notifications you should be aware of, let’s go over them. 

Native App vs Web Push Notifications for PrestaShop

The two types of push notifications are:

• Native app: sent from iOS or Android apps installed on the user’s device 
• Web: sent through the web browser 

These have many similarities, but also crucial differences. Each has a different ideal use case. 

We’ll give you our take. 

Native app notifications should be the #1 priority.  

One of the key reasons is that native app notifications are less intrusive, and get much higher opt-in rates. 

Think about it this way. 

When was the last time you clicked "allow" when you saw a "website.com would like to send you notifications" popup?

It’s unlikely that you’ll give them permission, right.

Why should you? You just wanted to look at the items and pages on the site, not be bombarded by messages 24/7. 

Indeed, according to push provider Gravitec, opt-in rates for web notifications are a paltry 5% for e-commerce websites.

So, not great. When it comes to actually using notifications, getting a high opt-in rate is critical.

This is where native app notifications shine. 

When a user downloads your app, this is a far deeper act of loyalty than landing on your website. They’re demonstrating notable affinity for your brand and interest in your products. 

So of course they’re more likely to give the greenlight to receive your push notifications. 

The data confirms this. 

According to Airship's detailed report, opt-in rates for native app notifications on Android range from 49% to 95%, with an average of 81%. On iOS side, they range from 29% to 73%, with a average of 51%.

So, opt-in rates for native app notifications are 10-15x higher than web notifications.

Just having the apps gives you an opportunity to ask for permission the right way, and send messages to people who actually want to be contacted.

Giving web notification permission on mobile just isn’t really a thing, 90% of people just click no straight away. 

So, should you have web push notifications at all? 

Yes, actually you should have both. 

Native app notifications should be the priority. They’ll give you a larger (and more receptive) audience that you can segment and send high-converting, personalized notifications to. 

You should also set up web notifications too though. 

Despite the low opt-in rate they’re easy to set up, cover desktop users, and give you at least a chance of getting every single site visitor into your funnel. 

With native app and web push notifications set up for your PrestaShop store, you’ll have a powerful combination to reach and connect with your customers. 

How to Set Up Push Notifications for Your Prestashop Store

So we’ve explained why you should send both native app and web notifications from your PrestaShop store. 

Now let’s explain how to set them up, starting with native apps. 

Sending Native App Notifications from PrestaShop

At the risk of stating the obvious, to send native app notifications you need a native app. 

Now of course PrestaShop is not for building native apps, it is a CMS designed for the web. 

But there’s a workaround - MobiLoud. 

MobiLoud is a platform for converting eCommerce web stores into high-end eCommerce apps for iOS and Android. 

We build the apps for you to your specification, and you can reuse all the features and functionality from your existing site. Everything PrestaShop gives you for the web, you can translate that into app-form with MobiLoud. 

We’ve built thousands of apps that have sent millions of push notifications, so we know the power of native push first hand. 

All our apps are integrated with OneSignal, the best push notification platform on the market. 

As soon as customers download your apps from the App Store and Google Play, you can ask them for notification permission and start sending unlimited messages to them straight away. 

We also built a special feature for abandoned cart notifications. The apps detect when a customer has closed the app with items in their cart and trigger a notification sequence designed to nudge them to complete their purchase. It works really well!

MobiLoud is all you need to convert a PrestaShop store into native eCommerce apps and send unlimited push notifications to customers. 

It’s the best way since all others either cost hundreds of thousands of dollars (native development) or result in low-quality, cookie-cutter apps that won’t do your brand justice (automated app builders). 

Talk to one of our app experts and get your questions answered. 

With MobiLoud you get everything you need to send native app push notifications. Because your apps are your web store, wrapped in the optimal native UX, it is sending native app notifications from PrestaShop - one of the few ways to do so. 

Now we’ve covered native apps, let's move on to web notifications. 

Sending Web Push Notifications from a PrestaShop Store

Native app notifications should be the #1 priority. They’re much more likely to be welcomed and engaged with by your customers. 

That doesn’t mean you should ignore web notifications though. While native app notifications are like a targeted, precise channel to your most loyal customers, web notifications are more like a scattergun aimed at every web visitor. 

Considering that more people will visit your site than download your app, web notifications give you at least the chance of building a connection with casual site visitors who aren’t ready to move down the funnel to an app download. 

Setting up web push notifications for PrestaShop is simple. 

PrestaShop itself doesn’t have built-in web notification functionality, but you can get it through an add-on module. 

PrestaShop has thousands of great functionality-extending modules in its marketplace, and push is no different. 

We have a specific recommendation: 

• Web Browser Push Notifications using OneSignal

There are a few reasons we recommend this module. 

Firstly, we’ve worked with OneSignal for many years, and know that they’re an excellent platform with best-in-class infrastructure. 

This module isn’t officially built with OneSignal, but it is built and maintained by one of PrestaShop’s “Superhero” community developers with over a dozen projects and more than a decade of experience. 

The module is actively maintained, compatible with PrestaShop 8, and costs under $80 to get going.  

Overall a solid choice for sending web notifications from PrestaShop. 

Installing your Web Push Notification Module

The installation process is straightforward. If you already run a PrestaShop store you won’t have any issues. 

If you’re new to PrestaShop though, here are the steps you need to take. 

1. Download the module: purchase and download the plugin from the PrestaShop addons marketplace.
2. Access admin panel: log in to the back office of your PrestaShop site.
3. Install the module: Go to the 'Modules' section and choose 'Module Manager'. Here, you can upload the module’s zip file and install it.

You’ll also need a OneSignal account set up and API keys. 

Beyond this it's a case of configuring and testing the notifications. 

Definitely make sure you test notifications on different devices and browsers. 

As for configuration - you’ll need to define critical settings like:

• Delivery options (instant vs scheduled)
• Opt-in prompts
• Notification content
• Targeting parameters

And more, depending on your setup. 

OneSignal also gives you the option to tie notification sequences to specific PrestaShop events, so you have plenty of options to experiment with. 

And you should experiment. Constant optimization and A/B testing is the way to push notification success. 

Speaking of push notification success, let’s look at a few best practices for sending push notifications from your PrestaShop store. 

Push Notification Best Practices for PrestaShop Stores

Compelling notifications are based on great copy, and contextually relevant messages that provide value to the recipient in some form. 

Never spam, never send notifications just because it “seems like a good idea”. There should always be:

1. A strategic business reason 
2. Value for the customer 

For. Every. Single. Notification. 

Copywriting

A well-crafted notification can be the difference between a sale and a missed opportunity, so copywriting best practices should be followed. 

Remember that they're not just alerts - they're calls to action. 

Each message should be punchy, focused and concise (they’ll have to be with the character limit).

When writing notifications:

• Keep it brief. Limit your message to 10 words or fewer whenever possible
• Use power words and compelling verbs to spur action
• Create a sense of urgency with limited-time offers

A/B testing different message styles and content can pinpoint what works best for your audience.

Rich Media 

Another great thing about push is the ability to use rich media in your notifications. 

This works particularly well for eCommerce, and particularly well for native app push notifications which can sync more closely with the functionality of the OS. 

If there’s the potential for a visual element, like when announcing a new product or offer, include a nice image and watch your conversion rates increase. 

Personalization 

You should also personalize notifications when you can. Native app notifications are, again, better for this because you can use all of the data from the app to personalize the message. With web notifications, you might not even know a single thing about them. 

A few basic personalization tactics to test out:

• Use the recipient's name to grab attention
• Recommend products similar to previous interests
• Send exclusive offers based on previous interests

Test this out and you’ll see higher engagement rates as your messages resonate with individual customers.

Timing and frequency

The timing and frequency of your notifications is really key.

One of the most common beginner errors is bombarding users with too many notifications. This will lead to opt-outs and annoyed users who think less of your brand. 

On the other hand, if you’re too sparing and sporadic this could mean missed opportunities. 

Like many things it’s about striking the right balance by:

• Schedule push notifications based on customer time zones for maximum impact
• Avoid odd hours which may annoy your subscribers
• Establish a balanced frequency that keeps users informed but not overwhelmed

Some studies argue that the best time to send notifications is between 11am and 1pm, when customers are most likely to be relaxing with lunch, others found that more than two notifications daily lead to higher opt-out rates. 

Ultimately you need to monitor the performance of your campaigns and find what works best for you. 

But always remember that the goal is to add value, not clutter, to your customers’ lives.

Start sending push notifications today

So, that’s how to send push notifications from PrestaShop. 

You know 90% of what you need to know to make push notifications a success for your brand.

The remaining 10% will come from testing, measuring and experimenting. 

Let’s review:

1. You should use native app and web push, web push is for getting site visitors into your funnel and native app notifications are for deep engagement with loyal customers 
2. You can get full-fledged native eCommerce apps with rich push notification features with MobiLoud
3. You can set up web notifications yourself through a PrestaShop module

The key priority should be setting up native app notifications, which is where we can help you. 

Native eCommerce app modules on PrestaShop will only give you a cookie cutter app with limited functionality. MobiLoud on the other hand let’s you recreate your site entirely with apps that sync with your existing workflow and sell your products practically on autopilot. 

Native apps of a similar quality would traditionally cost hundreds of thousands and take many months to build. 

We can get you live in just weeks for a fraction of the cost. 

We give you everything you need to leverage PrestaShop’s rich features through a powerful new channel, and also set you up to use push notifications to maximum effect.

Want to learn more about MobiLoud? Get started with a free preview of your app, or schedule a free, personalized demo and get a first-hand look at the platform's possibilities with one of our app experts.

We’ve brought thousands of brands to the App Store and Google Play, and we can do the same for you.