As anyone who's watched my First Time User Experience videos knows, I'm generally amazed at developers' lack of care when it comes to push notifications.

One of the best and cheapest ways of engaging with your players and driving retention, push notifications are too often implemented in a careless and frankly impolite manner.

Yet as a new report from Accengage, which is based on 38 billion push notifications makes clear, if they are treated correctly, push notifications can be very powerful, especially on Android, which currently has 100% opt-in, although this will change when the Android M OS launches. 

Game developers have much to learn, though.

As a sector, games only have an opt-in rate of 36% on iOS, compared to 56% for telecomms and 51% for travel.

Looking a response rates to individual push notifications, gaming once again fails to shine.

On iOS, it's 4%, while its 8% on Android. Both rates are half that of the best sectors.

Global variation

It's also clear that the tech generates very different reactions in different geographies.

Europe is much more responsive than South America and Asia, for example.

Do it right

As for takeaway advice, Accengage points out that developers can optimise their opt-in rate by explaining what push notifications are for in a splash screen before triggering the iOS Push Notification permission request box.

This is important as you can only show the iOS Push Notification permission request box - so don't show it before players have even launched the game!

Below; an example of how not to integrate the iOS Push Notification permission request box.