Push Notifications: Using Them in Your No-Code App

To be clear, push notifications are messages that pop up on a mobile device. They look like SMS text messages and mobile alerts, but they only go out to users who have installed your app. Push notifications differ from in-app messages in that the user sees push notifications even if your app isn't open on their device (they typically pop up on the user's lock screen), while users only see in-app messages once they open your app.

Why use them in your app? For a couple of reasons. If you're a developer looking to sell your apps, push notifications give you a chance to communicate directly with your customers. Let them know about special features in your app, upcoming events, or new products and thank them for choosing your app. Or if you're part of a development team or you're using the app in a company setting and you need to send and receive messages from other team members or other people in the company, push notifications can handle that too. 

So, what do the notifications sent to customers or other users look like? Web push notifications normally include these elements:

• Title (such as your company or app name).
• Message (brief text).
• An icon, emoji, or image (often used to supplement the message).
• A Call To Action (such as a clickable link or button).

For example, the title might be "Mastering No-Code", with a message "Check out our new universal mobile app template", an image of a cell phone screen with an app running, and a CTA consisting of a link to this blog. 

How you create and manage push notifications depends on the platform you're using and the process can be fairly complicated. In most cases, implementing push notifications is going to require using a plug-in (or "add-on") specifically designed for the job. For example, if you built your app on Bubble you can use the "Firebase Cloud Messaging" plug-in (which costs $12 per application). Most other no-code platforms will have one or more similar plug-ins available and a few may even have push notifications integrated into the platform.