How to Use Onsite Notifications: 10+ Strategies for Beginners

The notification feed can help convert visitors, sell more, promote content, drive traffic, and do other things—and you’ll see useful examples of that in action here. 

Whether you’re an ecommerce store or a SaaS business, you’ll find great ideas you can implement even today.

Jump to sections:

• What are onsite notifications?

• How to use onsite notifications

• How to create an onsite notification campaign

• FAQs on onsite notifications

What are onsite notifications?

Onsite notifications are a non-intrusive, social media-style feed designed to engage website visitors. It’s displayed in a website’s header as a bell and uses targeting options to deliver the right content to move visitors down the funnel.

The feed shows that it’s got unread notifications to attract attention. Clicking the “bell” opens a feed with “teasers,” which show the complete messages if you click on them:

I won’t go too far into explaining what onsite notifications are. 

We’re here to talk about the ways to use them, but check out our complete guide to onsite notifications if you’d like some more background info.

If you'd like to know how to install them, check out this video:

How to use onsite notifications

Just like with any other marketing tool, we start creating campaigns by choosing a goal. There are 10 in total—but five of them become available only when you connect Shopify and Instagram.

To see the goals, click +Create Campaign in the dash.

Here’s the view of all 10 campaign goals (including those Shopify- and Instagram ones):

From there, you choose your goal and make a campaign.

Specifically—

Here are the strategies you should take advantage of:

1. Build an email list

2. Share targeted discounts

3. Increase average order value (AOV)

4. Get pre-orders of new products

5. Get more loyalty program participants 

6. Share incentives to get more orders

7. Get more signups for events

8. Raise awareness of product launches

9. Convert visitors with lead magnets

10. Share sales and promotions

11. Promote your services (SaaS)

12. Share news about releases (for SaaS)

13. Promote Instagram posts

1. Build your email list

The vast majority of our users run this campaign. 

Not surprising—email marketing is critical, and notifications are a completely new and non-intrusive channel to generate more leads.

The signup forms made with onsite notifications are straightforward and contain an image, a text with incentives (you can add discounts, too), and a button 👇

To create a notification for email list building:

Click Sign up when choosing goals > Add content > Add thank-you message. Once you’re done, hit Publish.

If you’re using Klaviyo, be sure to integrate it.

2. Share targeted discounts

This idea is about both building your email list and driving sales with, you guessed it, discounts. 

And it’s not just about showing the same thing to everybody. Take advantage of the targeting options and show your discount campaigns to:

• First-time visitors: a welcome discount, anyone?

• Returning visitors (the number of visits is customizable): (Discount + something else to convince to convert?

• Visitors coming from Google/paid campaign/specific country: This helps make personalized offers to customers

Example: 
We Are Jolies converts new visitors with a €5 discount for the first order.

To make a similar campaign:

Create campaign > Discount > Add content and discounts > Choose the audience to target in the Targeting tab.

Example: the Operator setting “Is greater than” and the Value “1” below mean that this notification will be shown only to returning visitors (or those who visit your site more than once).

3. Increase average order value (AOV)

When a customer adds a product to the cart, this campaign shows them a notification saying that reaching a certain order value will unlock a perk. This way, you can increase the value of orders made on your website.

CODAGE Paris is running such a campaign.

When you add a product to the cart, their website shows a free shipping promo automatically:

To make this notification campaign:

Connect your Shopify store to Wisepops to enable this feature: here’s how. 

When making a campaign, set your targeting like that (this one has $50 as the free shipping threshold, but you can choose any amount):

In-depth guide: How to increase average order value in ecommerce

4. Get pre-orders of new products

The idea here is to use onsite notifications to:

• raise awareness of upcoming arrivals

• generate interest in visitors

• take some pre-orders

This is exactly how Asphalte operates. The brand follows the pre-order business model, so generating awareness and interest is essential.

That’s why Asphalte’s website drives traffic to products like that:

When we reached out to Asphalte for a case study. Ben, the brand’s CRO, shared some of their results with onsite notifications.

So, according to him, visitors who clicked the notifications:

• Converted 3.5 times more: 13.2% vs 3.8%

• Viewed 2.5 times more pages on the website (6.6 vs 2.6).

• Contributed to 42% of Asphalte’s revenue (that includes 11.5% of those who interacted with the campaigns)

When asked about his overall experience with the feed, he said this:

“Onsite notifications are revolutionizing the way we reach our customers. A new lever for us - powerful, personalized and plug & play with Shopify.”

Ben Mateo, CRO, Asphalte

Learn more about Ben’s strategy: Asphalte engages visitors with onsite notifications

5. Get visitors to join your loyalty program

You can also add a message about your loyalty program to the feed. 

Doing so would be a great way to promote signups because the message would be easy to find (many websites put messages about loyalty programs somewhere closer to the footer).

Here’s how Neom does this:

To create a similar onsite campaign:

Choose Loyalty in goals > Make sure to add a link to your loyalty program page to the button of the notifications.

Here’s how this setting looks:

6. Share incentives to get more orders

Have a lot of marketing ideas to increase sales?

You can try all of them on your website with onsite notifications—all with no need to code, create banners, or even add extra pages. Just create a campaign and test it.

Tomojo, a pet food subscription service, has this campaign where they give new customers a 25% discount for the first order plus an extra discount on all subsequent ones:

That’s a pretty good deal.

And the onsite notifications take care of huge marketing must-dos: a) getting an offer in front of customers in a non-intrusive way and b) giving just enough info to make them understand how they can benefit.

7. Get signups for events

If your business involves events or outdoor activities, this idea is for you. 

You can:

• Drive traffic to pages with events

• Get signups/bookings/registrations

• Share event-related promo content

Example:

Pedego Harlem promotes their NYC bike tours like that 👇 Clicking View Tours takes visitors to the booking page where they can learn more about the experience.

To make a similar campaign:

Choose a blank campaign (that “Blank Canvas” button in the window with goals) and add your content. Make sure to place a link to the event page to the button of the notification (View Tours in the Pedego example above).

8. Raise awareness of product launches

Need to make product announcements on your website?

If yes, onsite notifications can make this task easier for you. The “bell” stays above the fold, so it gives great visibility to campaigns.

Example: 

Soi Paris makes frequent product and collection announcements on their website, which helps them raise awareness and drive traffic to new arrivals:

There’s one more campaign from Soi Paris we’d like you to know about:

They ran an egg hunt campaign on the website (yep, you read that right!) and had 233 customers redeem discount codes in just 48 hours: Soi Paris onsite campaign.

9. Convert visitors with lead magnets

Using ebooks, reports, and other lead magnets?

Then take advantage of onsite notifications to get them in front of your website visitors. 

Example:

Dotdigital shares an ebook like that—it takes visitors just one click (opening the feed) to see the message!

To make such a campaign:

Choose Announce as your goal (or you can go with a blank template, too), customize the content, and make sure the link to your lead magnet is added to the button.

10. Share sales and promotions

Having a simple way to share various marketing offers gives you a better chance to meet your visitors at different points of their customer journeys.

Onsite notifications are that simple way.

Make and share your special offers and news about sales promotions in the onsite feed—within minutes. Once again, no need to design website banners.

Example:

Cosmoparis lets visitors know about a chance to grab products with discounts using multiple feed messages:

Let’s click the first teaser…

And we get this message about the extra 20% discount:

If we click Enjoy—

We will go to the “Last Chance” page with the sale.

Just like that, the store encourages product exploration and buying!

You can do the same.

For one, you can personalize every notification campaign to specific visitor groups thanks to audience targeting (find these settings in the Targeting tab in the campaign builder). That will make your offers even more compelling.

To make a similar campaign:

Choose a template (Announce and Discount will do fine) or start with a blank one. From there, it’s just a matter of adding the content and adjusting the audience targeting.

11. Promote your services (for SaaS)

As a trusted technology partner, Felgo offers training and custom workshops to their clients. To build awareness of this service, the company uses dedicated campaigns.

Example (Felgo):

As you can see, the campaign gives just enough info to spark interest.

And if a visitor clicks Browse Now, they will get straight to the page with the schedule. There, they can get more info on training topics and reserve a seat.

To make such a campaign:

Again, it’s a matter of including the link to the service page in the button of the notification.

12. Share your releases (for SaaS)

If you’re working for a SaaS company, you know that Product Led Growth (PLG) is the way to go about marketing.

One must-do PLG idea is to keep your users up to date with all new features your product team releases. This is where onsite notifications come in handy!

For example, you can share your newest releases with a bell—exactly the same way how social media feeds work. 

In fact, that’s how we use the bell ourselves: here’s the feed inside Wisepops, packed with product updates, new content, and more:

13. Promote your Instagram posts

If social media is a big part of your strategy, then you can create campaigns to drive traffic to your newly published posts.

Here’s an example of how users of onsite notifications do that:

You can actually connect your brand’s Instagram to Wisepops. This way, you’ll integrate onsite notifications with your account.

Here’s how to do it: How to connect Instagram to your feed.

How to create an onsite notification campaign

Step 1: 

Log in to Wisepops (you can also sign up here).

Step 2: 

Choose Create Campaign (make sure you’re in the Notifications tab)

Step 3: 

Select the goal for your campaign 

You get ready-to-go templates for every goal to help speed things up:

Confirm your choice by clicking Create Campaign.

Alternatively, you can click Blank Canvas. The editor will give you a completely black campaign that you can personalize as you want.

Step 4:

Customize the teaser here:

Step 5:

Customize the main message (includes the image, description, and the button).

Step 6: 

Write the success message (appears when a visitor signs up):

Step 7:

Choose an audience to show the campaign to:

Step 8:

Click Manage integrations to connect your campaign to Klaviyo. Once you set up the integration, all the emails you capture will be automatically added to Klaviyo (here’s the integration guide).

Once you’re done, hit Publish to take your campaign live.

Onsite Notifications: FAQ

How do I add onsite notifications to my website?

You can sign up here. From there, you just need to add the feed to your website: installation guide. Our support team will also assist you if you have any questions!

Can I integrate onsite notifications with my tech stack?

You can integrate your campaigns with Klaviyo and Instagram. Also, you can connect Zapier and integrate your feed with any ESP or CRM. Here are the instructions.

Do onsite notifications work on any website?

Yes! They work on any website platform.

Can I use onsite notifications for free?

Onsite notifications are included in every Wisepops plan. You can try the app for free for 14 days.

Can I customize the view of onsite notifications?

Yes! Every element is customizable. You can make your feed look like it always was a part of your website.

Can I choose a different icon than a bell?

Yes! The bell is fully customizable, so you can use any icon you’d like. For example, Faguo, an online store made the “bell” into a loudspeaker:

• Instructions for adding the bell

• Advanced feed customization guide

Can I put the notification feed in a different place than the website's header?

With some dev skills, you can install the “bell” whenever you want on your website. You can also use our no-code “floating feed" (the image on the left 👇)