One of the major discussions at the moment in regard to mobile apps gravitates around push notifications. Push notifications can be incredibly useful. In fact, the old ideas about ad placement in a mobile environment would probably die out because there is simply too little page space available for ads.
While mobile devices got bigger and bigger screens, it is equally obvious this trend cannot continue much longer… unless we genetically engineer our hands bigger by a couple of inches as well. So, push notifications are the foreseeable future of transmitting information from business to customer, a.k.a. advertising. But what can we expect from push notifications in the near future?
Some argue for the gradual disappearing from view (or homepage) of most of our mobile apps. For instance, Paul Adams invited us to number the days of mobile apps in on the recent post on his blog. Adams predicts that notifications will take up the functional role of apps to the point where will no longer see them after installation. Paul Adams thinks notifications will gradually assume a much more important role and morph into content cards, allowing easier user access to browse more information and even to take more actions straight from a pop-up. You can see on the left the way Adams envisions this in his concept design.
According to Sarah Perez from TechCrunch, Push notifications have already been used in innovative ways in Push or Drop, her claim being that these two are trendsetters towards a future where " … apps themselves, once installed and configured, are somewhat invisible to end users. You interact with the push notifications themselves, and never really return to the apps unless you want to subscribe to more channels or delete existing ones".
One last important trendsetter for push notifications is Matt Asay interesting insight about the Google work on offline-first technologies. Google’s ServiceWorker project will enable Push Notifications in the browser, possibly even re-setting the match between mobile apps or mobile browser. Thus, pages will work even offline and remember the interaction up until the moment the device is back online, enabling a given website to notify you days, weeks, or months after you visit it.
At AlphaTech we do not wait for the future, we anticipate it. Why not use now push notifications and establish yourself as a trendsetter inside your local niche? We are able to deliver to you an app that that is “your app” from top to bottom.