Push capture widget
IMPORTANT: For a push capture widget to appear on your site, you must have the tracking code installed.
You also need to have a service worker (service-worker.js file) installed in the root level of your website (recommended), where the capture widget is displayed. The service worker enables Ortto to trigger a notification by accepting a contact’s request to send a notification, and knowing who the contact is and that they have granted permission. Without the service worker, Ortto wont be able to send notifications to your web push subscribers, even if they have given the system permission.
To send a web push campaign you must first create a capture widget with a push permission request to obtain a person’s (contact’s) permission to receive web push notifications. If you try to create a push campaign without a widget to capture people’s push permissions, the audience for the push campaign will be empty.
NOTE: Push permissions for native applications (iOS and Android) are handled via your app. When a person provides permission to receive app notifications Ortto inherits the subscription value, so a capture widget is not required.
Once a person has clicked the capture widget with the intent to accept (or reject) push notifications, they will be presented with the system (browser) notification request to "Allow" (subscribe) or "Block" (unsubscribe) notifications. This request is automatically generated by the system, and is not handled by Ortto.
NOTE: A contact can allow notifications in their browser but not receive notifications because their system settings have notifications disabled. For example, a contact using an Apple MacBook and browsing with Google Chrome needs to go into their system settings > Notifications > Google Chrome, then toggle on the "Allow notifications" pill.
Ideally, the contact will also have the notification style set to "Alerts", which will display the notification until the contact dismisses it (if set to "Banners", the notification will disappear automatically after a short period of time).
If the contact has notifications disabled at the system-level, Ortto will make a first attempt to deliver the notification, as we don’t yet know that it can’t be delivered. However, on the next attempt to send a notification, it will result in a failed send (invalid) and the contact will automatically be unsubscribed from web push notifications.
The "soft ask" approach of prefacing the system notification request with a capture widget allows you to provide context or more information about the type of notifications a person will receive (such as new feature or subscription status updates) and how often they can expect to receive them.
Request push permission
Requesting push permission is achieved by adding a link with the On click destination Request push permission to your capture widget. You can add this:
- within the Text section for a relevant word or phrase, e.g. "Enable notifications", or
- with a Button.
Using the above example, once the visitor clicks on "Enable notifications", the system notification permission request is displayed. If the user clicks "Allow", in Ortto their push permission will be set to "true" (subscribed). If the user clicks "Block", in Ortto their push permission will be set to "false" (unsubscribed).
NOTE: Currently, push permissions requests are not supported by iOS web browsers (Safari/Chrome/Firefox). As such, push campaigns cannot currently be delivered to iOS web browsers (Mac and Windows desktop browsers, and Android web browsers are supported).
NOTE: If you create a capture widget with a Request push permission function but no means of capturing customer data (such as a form for email), any user who chooses to "Allow" or "Block" notifications will not be added as a contact to your CDP. However, we will store the permission response so that if the user becomes a CDP contact in future, we can associate the notification permission response with them.
If needed, you can choose to collect unidentified users responses and store these users as contacts in your CDP. In this case, the contact will have limited data associated with them but can be included in an audience for future push campaigns. Capturing unidentified users as contacts may result in duplicate contacts.
Learn more about handling unidentified users.
Create a push capture widget
To create a new push capture widget in Ortto:
- On the Capture page, click New widget.
- At the New capture widget page, choose a suitable template or click Start from scratch, then Next.
- If you chose to start from scratch, on the Widget types page, select a type then click Create.
Creating a Prompt capture widget (Click on the GIF to maximize it) - On the New widget page (capture widget details):
- Click the name of the capture widget to edit and change its name.
- Turn the capture widget ON to publish it on your website.
TIP: The Prompt capture widget type was designed for capturing push permission, as it more closely resembles the system permission request.