Push Notifications (OneSignal integration)

A powerful mobile-first communication channel that can increase your store's user engagement like never before.

I. What are push notifications?

Push notifications are small, pop-up messages sent to users' devices from your mobile app, and can be viewed from the device lock screen when an app isn't currently in use.

What's special about push notifications is that they are designed to capture users' attention in real-time, and often trigger immediate engagement. Therefore, they can be used to convey reminders, updates, promotions, and more.

II. How to integrate push notifications into your app?

1. Create your app in your OneSignal account

Our push notifications are powered by OneSignal, so you'll need to have a OneSignal account first to use this feature. Don't have one? Don't worry, you can create a free OneSignal account any time here for UNLIMITED number of push notifications!

After logging in, click New App/Website to add your app.

To add your app, you'll be required to fill in the name of your app & your organization, then select a first channel. You can choose either Apple iOS or Google Android as your first channel based on which platform you want to publish for your app. Then, please click Next: Configure Your Platform to proceed.

Click Next: Configure Your Platform after filling in the info above.

You have now successfully created your app! You'll be redirected to the platform configuration page as below, but you can leave these configurations for us later. Click Settings on the left navigation menu to proceed to the next step!

Click Settings on the left navigation menu.

2. Share your OneSignal account with SimiCart

For us to assist you with platform configurations, we'll need your account access. In Settings section, please navigate to Team Members > Invite to App, then add [e-mail] in Admin role.

Click on Team Members on Settings page.

Click Invite to App on Team Members page.

Fill in our email, [e-mail] & set the role to Admin. Click Invite and done!

3. Get the OneSignal App ID

Now, to get your account connected to SimiCart, from the app's Settings page, please navigate to Keys & IDs.

Click Keys & IDs on Settings page.

You'll need both OneSignal App ID & REST API Key (API Authentication Key) for the next step.

In the App ID section of Key & IDs page, find & copy OneSignal App ID.

In the API keys section of Key & IDs page, add & copy your REST API Key (API Authentication Key).

4. Enable the integration

Now, from SimiCart Mobile App Builder admin dashboard, please navigate to Push notifications.

Paste the previously copied OneSignal App ID & REST API Key into their corresponding fields, then click Check connection to validate your OneSignal account's connection to SimiCart.

Click Check connection after filling in the keys.

Now your OneSignal account has been successfully connected to SimiCart!

5. (For Android only) Create a Firebase project

For store owners who have their mobile app on Android platform, there will be one more step.

First, create a new project with your app name at Google Firebase.

After creating the project successfully, please navigate to Project Overview > Users and Permissions, then add our email, [e-mail] as Owner.

Navigate to Project Overview > Users and Permissions

In Users and permission page, click Add member.

Fill in [e-mail] and set the role to Owner. Click Add member to confirm.

Now you've done all the necessary steps to get your push notifications up and going. Leave the rest to us!

III. How to manage your push notifications?

After the push notifications feature has been integrated into your app, it's time to create and send your first push notifications!

To start creating a new push notification, please click "Create new" button on our Push notifications page. The locations might vary based on whether you have already created a push notification or not.

Click "Create new" to create a new push notification

You will then be redirected to our New Push Notification page, where you can set up the following information for your push notifications:

• Title: The top-most text of your notification. Optional, but highly recommended to grab your user's attention.

• Message: Main content of your notification. Required.

• Message name: A name to internally identify your message among other messages you've sent. If left blank, value filled in ‘Message’ field will be used as the name of this message.

• Image: An optional large image to illustrate your notification contents. The recommended image format is a jpg filetype with 2:1 aspect ratio landscape.

• Launch destination: A destination that your notification redirects users to upon being clicked. You can choose to redirect to a product page, a product listing page (collection page) or a Web URL. If left blank, this message will automatically launch the app homepage upon click.

• Delivery schedule: You can schedule a message up to 30 days in advance. The timezone in which the message will be sent is based on your operating system's time.

  Select Specific time to set when the notifications should start sending.

Click Save to send or schedule your push notification.

After clicking Save to send or schedule your push notification, you'll be redirected back to the Push notifications dashboard, where you can see and manage all of your created notifications.

On the upper right of the page, you will see two buttons: View global report & Create new.

If you want to create another push notification, click Create now.

If you want to check high-level reporting on the overall performance of your push notifications campaign, click View global report. For more details regarding the report, please refer to this article.

Click "Create new" to create a new push notification. Or click "View global report" to check the high-level report on the effectiveness of your push notifications strategy.

With each push notification, in the Action column, you have the option to either duplicate the notification settings for a new one to save time, or view report on the performance of the chosen push notification.

In the Action column, choose "Duplicate" or "View report".

When viewing report for each push notification, you can check the following statistics:

Delivered: The number of messages that were sent from OneSignal to the Push Servers (Google (FCM), Apple (APNS), Huawei (HMS), etc.). This does not necessarily mean the devices have received these notifications.

Click-Through Rate: Click-Through-Rate (CTR) is measured by (total clicks/delivered) * 100%

Delivery Statistics: Provides feedback on how the message performed via 5 delivery statuses of your push notifications:

• Delivered: As mentioned above.

• Remaining: The number of devices that have not received the notification yet. These would be for notifications sent using Timezone optimizations.

• Unsubscribed: A failure reason. The number of devices that were unreachable and likely due to being unsubscribed from push notifications. Once a device has been detected as unsubscribed, it will be marked as unsubscribed and future notifications will not be sent to it unless it re-subscribes to notifications again.

• Failed: The number of devices that did not get a notification due to an error.

  These errors are typically caused due to one of the following reasons:

  1. Your OneSignal Application Settings are incorrect.

  2. These tokens belong to an app that does not match your OneSignal settings.

  3. Some other backend error occurred.

• Capped: The number of notifications that were not sent due to your OneSignal frequency capping settings.

Message Settings: Provides basic configuration of your push notifications including title, message, sending time, and launch destination.

✨ Now, are you ready to take your user engagement to the next level with our unlimited push notifications?