The world of notifications is large and complex. If you’re new to building one, here’s a starter kit with a set of glossary terms you should get acquainted with before laying the foundation for setting up a system.
API key
An API (Application Programming Interface) key is a code used to identify and authenticate an application or user. They provide a secret token to help with authentication. They allow software programs to communicate, share data and also integrate their functionalities. It can be used for user authentication and authorization, depending on the nature of the product in use.
You would need API keys at two levels.
a) to integrate Fyno with your provider (for example Twilio)
b) to integrate your application with Fyno (to directly send notifications)### IntegrationsIntegrations are **additions of service providers** to your platform so you can easily trigger notifications at your convenience. It’s quite tedious to integrate an API from every provider individually, it’s far easier to use a tool through which you can integrate multiple service providers which can run different parts of a campaign for you. For example, you might need a different integration for SMS, a different one for Whatsapp or email, and so on.
💡 Using a comms engine like Fyno also gives you the access to integrate multiple providers at once, thereby saving big on money as well as engineering effort.
Push Notifications
Push notifications are pop-up messages that come up on the user’s device from mobile apps, even if the app isn’t open. They’re two-pronged - can be on the web or mobile. However, mobile has proven to be far more effective than the web. The primary reason to use push notifications is to get the user’s attention to promotions, updates, reminders, etc. Essentially, push notification has a title, body copy, and the capability of attaching an image/video or a URL, along with an instant CTA. Push notifications are a powerful way to connect and reconnect with the end user. They help to increase visibility and engagement, drive conversions, help retention, and thereby scale businesses.
In-App Notifications
Known as a close cousin of Push, in-app notifications are, as the name suggests, notifications that pop up while the user is active on the mobile app. It differs from Push in the way that in-app notifications guide the user within the app, while push brings the user *to* the app. These notifications can be full-screen size, or smaller overlays, depending on the design aesthetics of the product. In-app notifications also help with holding the attention of the user but can be disturbing if overused. So it’s extremely important to selectively target, schedule and notify users accordingly. Content of in-app notifications can vary from asking to rate the app, getting users’ consent to enable push notifications, guides on how to use the product better, etc.
Channels
They are vehicles of communication that span across SMS, email, instant messaging, voice, etc with content that includes text, imagery, videos, gifs and other such media. Choosing the right channel for your communication is crucial. For example, something that’s urgent could be sent via SMS so the user is immediately alerted, but something lower on priority could be sent via email.
Depending on the content of the notification, the appropriate channel should be chosen.
Routing
This refers to building an algorithm to determine the most appropriate service provider that will service your notification request, intuitively. After you’ve integrated multiple providers into your system, how do you figure out which provider should trigger the notification and how? That’s when routing comes into the picture. Just because you’ve integrated providers for different channels like SMS, email, WhatsApp, slack, etc doesn’t mean you need to use all of them at the same time, and neither should one provider carry a heavy load. Routing acts as the load balancer.
Events
A superset that encapsulates templates, the channels that it should engage, and the route or the provider that the notification should use. In its entirety, it’s called an Event. This comes in handy especially if your ecosystem of notifications has become more complex, with more than 2 service providers or channels. Events are mainly designed to reduce the workload of engineers.
Campaign Reports / Conversion Analytics
As the name suggests, it’s super important to see how a campaign worked or didn’t, so you can use the insights to plan your future projects. Conversion analytics helps you set benchmarks for your campaigns and determine how well your notifications are performing.
That’s broadly it, folks! Understanding each of these terms will give you an overarching view of a notification system and what goes behind making it the smooth engine that it is.We hope this was helpful.
Stay tuned for lots more from us, very soon.
Team Fyno.
