Update: Web-push notifications are now enabled for the Chrome browser. This article has been updated with new information.
How many subscription channels are you offering on your blog?
If you haven’t already enabled the must-have subscription options, you should do that now.
With recent advancements in technology, there are now a few new methods that you can use to notify your readers of latest posts or important updates from your blog.
Today, I will be talking about PushEngage: A web push notification service for WordPress. It also supports other platforms like e-commerce sites, BlogSpot, Joomla, Drupal, bbPress & much more. Before moving ahead, let me show you how much traffic I got in 3 days from PushEngage:
Using the PushEngage service, you give another subscription option to the readers of your blog who are using Chrome (all platforms) or Safari on Mac OS.
- Related Read: WordPress Desktop Editor For Mac – Blogo
If you are using a smartphone (iOS or Android), I’m sure you are aware of push notifications sent by your installed apps. Web-push notifications are similar to smartphone push notifications where your subscribers will be notified when a new post is published or when you manually send a push notification.
PushEngage is an awesome service that allows you to send these push notifications.
In this tutorial, I will show you how easy it is to enable push notifications for your WordPress blog.
You should open your WordPress blog’s admin panel and follow along with this tutorial. Within 5 minutes, your WordPress blog will be web-push notification enabled.
How to Get more subscribers & traffic with browser Push Notifications
At this moment, this service supports the Chrome browser on all platforms (mobile & desktop) and the Safari browser on Mac OS. In the future, we can expect it to support other browsers like Firefox.
The setup part is quick and easy. So let’s get started with this step-by-step guide.
First, go ahead and create an account on PushEngage over here.
The free account allows you to send unlimited push messages per month for 2,500 subscribers, which is a decent number for a small and medium-sized blog.
Once you have signed up for an account, you need to add your blog’s name and add your blog’s logo. This is useful for the branding of your push notifications.
- Go to Plugins > Add New and search for “PushEngage”. Install and activate the plugin. <Link of the plugin>
- Upon activation of the plugin, click on PushEngage > Dashboard. To activate the plugin you need to get the API Key from your PushEngage account. I have marked the points in the below image that will help you create the API Key.
Once you are done activating the plugin, now you need to configure the subscription settings.
- Go to Settings > Installation Settings & add your logo. (This is important for your brand identity.)
Subscription Dialog Box Settings
This is where you will configure the prompt that users will see to subscribe to your push updates. I use “Single Step Optin” for ShoutMeLoud & I suggest the same for you. “Safari Style Box” is another popular method.
Once you are done and logged in, you will see a dashboard like the one below (in the screenshot). It will show you the stats of existing subscribed users and other details.
You can click on the “Send A Notification” tab to send a custom push message anytime.
GCM Settings
This value is pretty crucial & you really should create your GCM account.
If you are not so tech savvy, you can ignore it. However, using this documentation will make the process easier.
Welcome Notification
This step is optional.
If you want to send a welcome message to users who subscribed to your notifications, use this feature.
You can ask users to download your mobile app or send them to your top resources.
Stats
Here is a Stats report of push notifications from ShoutMeLoud:
In your post writing section, you will see an option to send push notifications when you publish or update a post.
Try not to send too many push notifications in a short span. In the next guide, I will share a few tricks of PushEngage to help you make the most out of push notifications.
Do let me know your experience with web-push notifications. Do you know of another modern subscription option that I should cover here on ShoutMeLoud?
Don’t forget to share this tutorial with your WordPress blogger friends on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus!
Push Engage is awesome, but what about one signal one? most of my friends suggest me to use one signal and its free to use.
Thank you so much.bro….
Good and well written article!! Much informative to get revenue by generating the organic traffic through various notifications or subscriber features of the browser.
Dear Harsh,
After reading this post I installed Pushengage on my site and within 15 days, I got 67 subscribers. But today as soon as I updates this plugin, my site was down. After calling customer care of bulehost india, they deactivate all plugin and told me to activate one by one. But Pushengage show ‘Fatel error’ which activating this plugin and they said me to install other plugin.
So please guide me.
@Kiran
Seems like some kind of compatibility issue with PushEngage plugin.
Do write an email to ravi@pushengage.com & he would help you fixing this issue.
Let me know how it goes.
Hi harsh,
You are the inspiration for me. I am new in this field and don’t know anything about it, that’s why I try to follow you. One of the best site I ever found for WordPress tutorial.
Thanks for this help.
Thank you for such great article. pushengage is one of the best free push notification plugin for WP. I’m using this on my blog.
Thanks Harsh for sharing a great WordPress plugin to engage more visitors with the own blog I am definitely trying this technique.
Although i used the guide for GCM SETTINGS it doesn’t show me the active subscribers. I used the Firebase console to get GCM Project Key and GCM Project Key. I copy paste these and try to verify the GCM Settings but i get this message “Sorry But our Server is not authorised to use this API KEY ,If you want to know how to register for a GCM Key, please refer to our blog post here”
What I am doing wrong? Can you help me?
hi harsh
i like the way you explain everything to us in a normal way,,,
keep up this hard work
Thanks Harsh,
I will surely use this tool in my website to get more traffic…thanks for always sharing great post..
Really there are great benefits of enabling push notifications.
I am using OneSignal and it is totally free.
I have 3000+13000 push notification subscribers in my 2 blogs. It helps me to reach my contents instantly to my readers.
Hi Harsh,
I could see many websites have implemented the push notification.
Never expect it can be so useful to drag traffic.
Definitely will try it on my blogs.
Thank you.
Hi Harsh, I was looking for similar tool and I founf this a good fit. Thanks
Hello Harsh! Thanks for the incomparable Tutorial. I own a blogger blog but I don’t know if the PushEngage will work on it.
Please an explanatory Tutorial on Blogger side will be welcomed sir.
@Ani
It will work on BlogSpot blog as well. The only difference is, you need to add the code manually rather than using plugin.
Thank You Harsh Sir,I am trying to install pushengage in my blog.Really Helpful
Thanks Harsh, I have integrated it to my website. Thanks..
Hi Harsh!
Quick Question…
Are you using PushEnagage for this site? Or something else for push notifcation?
I was using OneSignal but it using a lot of hosting resourse. Now I am planning to switch to something else.
@Sidetrend
I’m using PushEngage from past 9 months & it’s been working out great. They keep adding new features that makes them outstanding.
Hi,
Is it possible for Blogger blogs too?
@Naseef
Yes, you can use it on BlogSpot blog as well.
Awesome article Harsh,
For a blogging guide, harsh and his shoutmeloud site always is an ideal for every beginner.
Bdw, finally found a complete guide on this topic.. thanks for sharing it…
Thanks, It helped me in choosing the best push notification service for my blog.
Hi Harsh,
Great write up on push notifications. I’ve actually been considering adding it to my blog. I just recently upgraded from HTTP to HTTPS.
Since you’ve started using these notifications, have you noticed a decrease in your email subscribers? I’ve just started growing my subscribers and think that I would benefit more from having people opt into my email list.
Although I can see how this would be beneficial for getting people back to your site. I’ve visited your blog a few times now. (first time commenting)
I always seem to get a new push notification that talks about a new blog post on your site. Definitely has me curious as to whether or not this has affected your email opt-in rates.
Thanks
-Susan
@Susan
I’m seeing both of them as a different medium to subscribe to my blog. Push notification & email serves the different purpose & so they should be used accordingly.
Truly said sir, Push notifications really does good job. I am also using PushEngage for sending notifications and it is sending me good traffic.And I hope it will be beneficial for others users too.
Great article sir and definitely there is a great benefit of enabling push notifications.
Its not working in my HTTPS blogspot blog,
Thank’s Harsh Sir.
Hi, very good article.
thanks for sharing keep up the good work.
Pushengage is best free push notification plugin. Thanks for sharing Harsh!!
Great article Dude and definitely there is a great benefit of enabling push notifications.
@Onhox
Indeed. Try it & share your experience with all of us.
thank u harsh bro for this i was looking for the same
@Sufyan
Let me know your experience.
Thanks for sharing. Is it possible to have notification on mobile ?
@Sudhakar
Yes, it supports Chrome browser on mobile.
Thats an amazing plugin Harsh. Thanks for introducing me to this.
Really nice Harsh. I also tried PushEngage. It is really good notification service for new bloggers.
thanks for your sharing, thats so helpful for me.
Hi Harsh
I work for the traffic generator to my new on niche technology I think the notification of the push can help me have traffic engaging and help build a list of subscribers who will be interested in new messages I will publish. Thank you for this very relevant article.
Thank You Harsh Sir for letting us to know this additional features of blogging. Definately it increases our pageviews.
This plugin looks much more better also you get 2500 free subsriber option which is really good to test it.
Hello there Harsh,
Pleasant Tutorial, I was utilizing push engage before I discovered your post.
There is a little change in Pushengage, on the off chance that anybody utilizes HTTPS then they can conceal the subdomain augmentation and demonstrate their own particular URL in the Alert Box/popup.
I began utilizing without https so I saw this change
Nice tutorial.I am using onesignal push plugin for my wordpress. But after reading your article, i think i should check pushengage once. Thanks for letting us about this plugin
Thank you for your contribution to help other blogger to grow..
And again thank you, to giving such information to grow..
Keep it up..
We all are with you…
Thank you…
Respectes sir
I have a problem last 3 days.
My wordpress is not open.
When i go http://www.himanshugrewal. com/ wp-admin (enter email id and password) my wp dashboard is not open.
When i click forgot password they show me error like “could not save password reset key to database”
can you please tell me how can i login my wp.
I don’t have any cpanel and WHM account.
I install my site to serverpilot.
Hey Himanshu,
Your MySQL DB is full. Try deleting some database and try again. If it does not work out, contact your host.
Greetings Harsh, First of much thanks for sharing this excellent procedure and this is numerous also, since this is a warning the clients will get on the page in that spot in the screen while they are in the page. This is truly exceptionally pleasant. At this cutting edge age we ought to discover new thoughts and new procedures which would be exceptionally advantageous and simple for clients to get to the reason they are perusing the post. Be that as it may, I have couple of inquiries.
* Does this apply for the versatile programs too?
Much thanks to you once more.
Thanks Harsh Configured it. Good to see you are even promoting plugins which has just 900+ downloads.. Some of the options are changed..Like single optin subscriber has been removed
Also there is a delay field introduced
Hi Harsh,
Nice Tutorial, I was using pushengage before I found your post.
There is a little tweak in Pushengage, if anyone uses HTTPS then they can hide the subdomain extension and show their own URL in the Alert Box/popup.
I started using without https so I noticed this change.
Thanks
Niraj
Aswm ! thanks for sharing tip with us !!
Thanks for such an informative post. My question is, can we use it on mobile devices too. I think this doesn’t support mobile devices yet.
Hi Harsh, I am already using it on blogger. Push notification is an amazing service for bloggers, as well as blog readers. I have nice experience on it.
Very informative post Harsh! would want to use this feature in my site too.
Hi Harsh
I was noticing these notifications on different blogs, its really good idea.
Very helpful article to implement push notification for wordpress users but my blog is running on blogspot. So is there any way to implement push notification on blogspot?
Great article Harsh and definitely there is a great benefit of enabling push notifications. I just saw that PushEngage is also a big service provider and they are providing free service up to 2500 subscribers which is great as well.
Although you can also tell about OneSignal which provides push notification service for free to all. I have used it for sometime and it’s working just fine. Just sharing my experience
Hi Harsh,
I wanted to add this feature, but this time with the help of your post i will be doing.
Thanks for great share.
Looks like you’re not using Pushengage on shoutmeloud.com anymore? Didn’t get a permission notification (using Firefox) and a site scan did not show the Pushengage plugin.
Any particular reason you removed it?
@Chris
We are using Pushengage only. Most probably it got deactivated due to our recent migration from HTTP to HTTPS. Looking into it. Should be fixed within 24 hours.
Tks Harsh.
I installed Pushengage. Then decided to uninstall it (deactivated and deleted). Pushengage left the code on my site somehow. Users are still getting a popup asking them to opt into push from Pushengage even with no plugin active.
I’ve contacted Pushengage about this. It’s disappointing that uninstalling Pushengage does not actually uninstall it.
@Chris
Try flushing your cache. If you are using Cloudflare, purge cache from there too. It will be fixed. I saw your comment about forum push, I removed it. I recently moved ShoutMeLoud from HTTP to HTTPS & that caused the issue. Still need to move forum to https.
Do let me know if above solution fixed your problem or not.
Tks Harsh for your message.
We do use Cloudflare. I just purged the Cloudflare cache and WordPress cache. I also cleared the cache in Firefox.
The Pushengage JS script is still on our pages though. People are getting the opt-in message for a push service we’re not using. Bummer. Fyi the site is http://blog.itviec.com.
I contacted Ravi the Pushengage CEO. He was very responsive. He said he believes the code does not come from the plugin and that one of our devs must have added it somewhere. That can’t be right because we don’t have any devs working on our WordPress site. We added the Pushengage plugin last week, then deactivated and deleted a few days later. Yet the code still is on our site.
It appears to be a bug that the Pushengage team is unaware of.
Chris – I wanted to share our views in this forum as well. We have exchanged emails and tested this issue thoroughly again and we found the code was removed each time plugin is deactivated.
Further, any addition of PushEngage code in WordPress automatically has a version number of the format
This is used internally in few things, and the fact your code does not have the ?ver implies it was not added using automated manner.
We request you to look at couple of things
1) You have GTM on your blog so check that if you used that.
2) This is placed next to Facebook pixel, and in between the pixel so check how you added FB pixel.
Hope you are able to resolve this soon.
Hi Ravi,
Thanks for your excellent support.
Per your instruction the culprit appeared to be a plugin called WP Facebook Pixel. It adds a FB tracking pixel to each page. Somehow it got mixed up with Pushengage. I deactivated this plugin, then reactivated it. That removed the code.
Again, thanks for being so responsive. I appreciate it!
Cheers,
Chris
Hi Harsh, informative post! I have been seeing these push notifications offers popup for a while in my browser every time I visited your blog, but quite honestly I was confused about it. I think there needs to be better/clearer instructions (which probably would need to be implemented by the PushEngage techs) on how a person needs to subscribe to this. Like when it shows up it says something by default like “Always subscribe to Push Notifications” and then it’s just sitting there like that and I always thought I was subscribed since it was just sitting there showing “Always Subscribe” and it didn’t say or really move me intuitively to do anything else.
But then today something told me to actually click on where it says “Always Subscribe”. Then that’s when I realized that all this time I had never really been subscribed to your push notifications; I just thought I was. So in my opinion they need to work on better prompts for this – especially being that this is a new technology and many visitors might be confused by it. It just needs to be more intuitive for people to subscribe and I’m sure I’m not the only person on the web who has been confused by this.
Hi,
Is there any way to use pushengage notification in joomla site ??
@Utkarsh
yes, you can!
You can add codes directly & use Pushengage dashboard to send notifications.
Thanks Harsh for such an informative article. I am currently using Pushchamp for web push notifications and it has attempted to change how we have been managing the delivery and usability of notifications. I am happy with their services but this article has given me a very clear insight for blog push notifications.
Hi,
This was the most and easy way for me to integrate pushengage on my website. Does this help to increase website ranking on Search engines?
Hi Harsh,
Would be checking out Pushengage. Right now, I am using Pushwoosh for my app. The free version is good to send push notifications and does the job quite well.
Hi Harsh I have tried this after reading your post and it is very easy to implement as well as useful tool. But have one issue it is using lot of resources and hence increasing my site load time which again is not a good sign. Is there any solution for same
Hi Harsh,
Is there any way to install plugins into free wordpress.com or any other method that can be implemented without using plugins for a special function to be achieved?
I have a question, I read somewhere that reader only receives notification when he is online. what about the push notification subscribers who are not currently on their desk.
Do they get notifications when they comes online or we can send notifications to online people only?
I it possible to remove the powered by pusengage.
and just show the push notification.
@Mohan
You need to grab the business plan for them to remove the branding. This cost only $49/month & offers up to 50K followers.
You are on which Plan?
I still see shoutmeloud.pushengage.com
thats somehow not complete removal of branding.
This is because HTTPS URL is required for subscription and sending. We create a subdomain for each of you, which you can use. You are also free to use your subdomain like https://notify.example.com which can remove the PushEngage branding.
I actually own a blogspot custom domain blog and ony blogger dashboard settings tab it says HTTPS is currently not available for custom domain blogs (I do not know what HTTPS is) but as you wrote above HTTPS is required! So will I be able to use push engage?
Hi Harsh I have tried this after reading your post and it is very easy to implement as well as useful tool. But have one issue it is using lot of resources and hence increasing my site load time which again is not a good sign. Is there any solution for same
@Amit
Use the tools.pingdom.com to see which script is taking maximum time to load. In the result tab, scroll down & sort the graph based on loading time. This would make you ensure which all scripts are increasing the loading. Any script should not take more than 100ms or 200ms in worse case scenario.
Yes I tried pingdom and gmatrix only and found that this increased my website size considerably high as well as my loading time increased after deactiving it, my speed again went to normal
Hi Amit, There are scripts that run in the background and hence these scripts increase the page load times. Anything that adds a script to the head tag will impact the page load time. Pushengage adds a script to the head tag and that is why you are seeing it impacting the loading time.
The only way you can speed up your website is by combining multiple scripts into one. There are many plugins that can help you do that.
Regards
Dilip
Hey Harsh,
Nice to hear from you after a while.
Good to know the new offer on the eve of Independence Day.
Waiting for it!
This plugin looks like a wonderful one.
I will install it and come back to you soon.
Thanks for sharing this easy tho do Tuto.
Happy Independence Day.
~ Philip
Great tutorial Harsh sir, I have successfuly added push notifications in my new english blog. Thanks for sharing.
Hi Harsh,
It’s amazing to know about the technique , I was just googling about I got your article It helps to follow the step one by one in correct way
Thanks a lot
Yes I see most of the bloggers using push notifications. This is the easiest way and good alternative to pop ups if I’m not wrong.
I would install it today and will check the response.
Nice article.
Thanks, Harsh
Hey Dumaji,
Happy to help.
Hello,
This post earlier says that this is free. But at the end you say this is available at a 30% discount? Please clarify.
Hey Ashwin,
Pushenngage offers five plans: free, enterprise, business, large business and pro. You can use free plan up to 2500 active subscribers which is a pretty decent amount for a small-medium blog. The other plans are paid, and the discount coupon is for those plans.
This is truly what I am looking for my blog. An announcement will help push back rate increases user’s website. Thank Harsh.
Hey CuongPjh,
Happy to help.
Thanks Harsh for explaining the nitty-gritty of PushEngage. I saw this on your website first time and thought to do same on mine too but was unsure on few things. Now I have something to refer back while doing it on my website. Great Info. Thanks again!!
Hey Harpreet,
Glad that you found it useful. Do share your feedback with us.
I had no idea that pushengage offers free account!! Thank you so much sir for this step by step tutorial. I’m going to install it on my blog right away!
I was seeing you were using LetsReach.. I tried that but that is not good. Today I read this post.. Gonna try this for my blog. Thank You Harsh
Thanks Harsh for sharing this. I was looking for something like this from months but could set up only after reading this article.
Need to say again thanks for sharing.
Love you shotmeloud
Thanks for the post Harsh ! Actually a good plugin. I thought push notification is part of cording and only coders can do that. But with this post you cleared my misunderstandings.
From the last couple of weeks, I’m noticing that every website is asking for permission for push notification and today just after opening ShoutMeLoud, I got everything I was keen to know about Push Notification.
Thanks Harsh
Hey Jayant,
Happy to help.
Hi Sir,
I’m create a new blog many days I was thinking to add push notifications for own blog. Push notification also important for blog. Thanks for this awesome post.
Hey Sanjay,
Glad I could help.
The Push notification is not showing in Mobile browsers.What i do…???
This one is the best tool to increase audience on our blog. Thanks for sharing this method.
Wow! This is very helpful. I am not using any of that but now I think it might be a good idea to set up something like this. As always, providing great value and doing it in a very simple way! Thanks a lot.
One Signal is the best push notification api I know… And it’s and interesting to use….Demo on techhabor.com
@Owraku
One Signal looks fascinating but it comes with a costly bargain.
It sells user cookies. Especially those who are making money from their blog or running E-commerce portal doesn’t prefer OneSignal.
WOW this is gold ! I am damn sure push notifications is much better than any other subscription tool in terms of instant connection and reaching to the subscribers. Thanks for the awesome tut !
Surely Pushengage is modern function for blog. Sending Notification of my blog like an app’s notification , How it is pleasant. I will try it.
Good tutorial, pushengage is a great plugin!
Is Pushengage plugin available for website with wordpress blog.
@Albin
Yes, you can integrate it with WordPress plugin or the script they provide. You can use Pushengage on any platform.
I would like to see something like this multi-platform. Eespecially for mobile phones as we’re experiencing more and more mobile users on our site. This seems to be a global trend I think.
@Csaba
1) Google Chrome is push enabled, so this technology is now available on android platform via chrome browser.
2) You can also have a mobile app and have it push enabled. I use it for ShoutMeLoud Android app, using a service call Parse.com
I consider mobile app for the blog as double-optin, as an end user have to install it.
This (Web-pus notification) is effective but a good idea is to show subscription notification after 4-5 visits. (These way we will get more targeted subscribers). What do you think?
Harsh, Thanks for the Nice Info
But How to use in the Blogspot Blogs? I need Help..
there is a option available for blogger also.
Can I use it on blogger/ blogspot?
@Vipin
Yes you can!
Thats an amazing plugin Harsh. Thanks for introducing me to this. I am sure this will help my Ipad users as most of them would be using Safari to access my blog.
Are these notifications for mobile users also ? Like pankaj sir said. Overall it is a nice plugin but can I use it on a multi-niche blog ?
@Rachit
You can use it on any type of blog. This notification is available for all major browsers.
Hi Harsh, First of thank you very much for sharing this beautiful technique and this is numerouno as well, since this is a notification the users will get on the page right there in the screen while they are in the page. This is really very nice. At this modern age we should find new ideas and new techniques which would be very convenient and easy for users to get to the reason they are reading the post. However, I have couple of questions.
Cheers!
* Does this apply for the mobile browsers as well?
* When will the push notifications appear? If an end user is reading a post and then you publish another post at that time or whenever a new post is published even if the user is checking your website at a later point of time?
Thank you again.
@Prabhudatta
Yes, it would also shown on mobile browser.
You decide when to send push. You can send it as soon as article goes live or send it manually later.
Nice tutorial to setup auto push notification. WHy only for Tech niche it also works like charm for entertainment niche like Movie info or review.my opinion.
@Deepak
You are right as it works for any niche. The reason I mentioned tech niche here as most of the tech oriented users are using Mac OS.