November 2017

The size of the notification does metter

Platform

Talking about apps and their efficiency, this is a very tricky question: what’s the right size for a notification? Is it right to have a limit? What is this limit?

Notification as a strong tool of communication

You have to be very carefull when you decide to use a notification, push or contextualized, for your communication campaign. First pay attention to the content you want to share and then how you want to share it. Concerning this aspect we are going to analyze the issue about the proper size of the text shared. A notification has a great power, it offers an important opportunity to every app owner. But you have to use it very carefully. Daily a mobile user receive an update notification from all his apps. That’s why it is important don’t be too invasive, your purpose is to win the competition with all the other notifications, yours has to be read.

Every user has the power to turn off any authorization to receive notifications, and if you want to communicate with him you have to avoid it. So don’t be pushy.

Limits of notifications’ size

A notification effectiveness is based on a prudent sending frequency and on the content shared, but also on the size of the notification. The ability to be concise is fundamental. Generally, with new operating system, the size limit depends on the version of it. For example with Android a simple notification is very limited, but with the multiple-line the limit is between 380 to 500. With iOS it depends on the context of visualization: a low limit in the lock screen, much longer in the notification tray.

Recently NearIT has decided to limit the size of the text available for the notification, up to 150 types. Important to remember that the visualization of the notification depends on the device, so you will not have always the same result, it’s impossible to preview.

NearIT’ SDK will work to automatically show the notification, text and icon, in the best way and to expand the longest notification. To be sure that the notification is entirely displayed and not cut off, it’s is reccomended be as shorter as possible. If the text is too long just by tapping you can expand it, but the experience taught us that this can be adverse for an winning user experience. You have to carefully consider all the studies about usability that prove that short and concise notification with emoji are much more appreciated from users.

The notification doesn’t have to be complete, user has to be curious to know more about it, he has to be persuade to tap the notification going in app. If you have a lot to communicate it’s better use the space inside the app. NearIT allows you to make and share many different kind of contents such as texts, multimedial contents, coupon and much more.

Notification has to be short, effective and intriguing, it has to stand out in a list pushing the user to investigate.

Do you want to know how to take the best advantage from notification?