Best practices for notifications

Notifications have come a long way, and they've gone in some wrong ways.

The right way to do notifications

There are a few rules of thumb to decide if something ought to be a notification. For example:

• Did a real, living human being take an action that has to do directly with you, like sending you a message or a friend request?
• Is there an action that you need to take urgently, like reviewing recent suspicious logins to your account?
• Is it a follow up to an action you took, and would obviously want to know the outcome of, like a shipping notification, or a stock purchase confirmation?

The wrong way to do notifications

Here are some examples of times you should not use app notifications:

• Things that really belong on a news feed, like "posts you might be interested in," or that someone who knows someone I met once has gone live.
• To tell users something trivial or obvious. Oh, your store has products on sale? Does it ever not have products on sale?
• To remind users that your app exists. It's annoying, and you sound desperate.
• Ads.