- Hey, everyone.
Larry Snow here, and in this video,
we're going to be taking a look
at how to add push notifications to your website.
So, when a person comes along to your website,
they'll see a little bell icon
which they can click on to subscribe to new posts.
They'll get a notification
when you add something new to your website.
Sounds pretty cool, right?
So if you're interested, stick around.
It's coming right up.
(distorted electronic music)
One of the ways in which you can add
more traffic to your website
is actually to implement these notifications.
Now, you might be aware of these notifications.
You might get them from Facebook and YouTube
and maybe some other websites,
and they have a different variety.
There's two or three that I know of.
We're going to be taking a look at one that's totally free.
It's called OneSignal,
and it's super easy to implement.
You'll need obviously a WordPress website,
because I'm going to be showing you how to install it on there.
It's actually a plugin.
And you're going to need to create a free account on OneSignal.
So, let's go through this, step by step.
Before we get into the nuts and bolts,
I just wanted to show you
what it actually looks like on an existing website.
So if I have it installed over here on policedriver.com,
and if you notice, down here in the bottom right-hand corner
and kind of out of the way
but still noticeable
is a red circle with a white bell in it.
And it'll, if you mouse over that,
it'll show you a little popup that says
subscribe to PoliceDriver notifications.
And if I click on that,
then another popup window shows up that says subscribe,
powered by OneSignal.
So you click on subscribe,
and it says you are now subscribed.
And over on the right-hand side,
you might see something from Chrome saying PoliceDriver.Com,
policedriver.com, Thank you for subscribing.
Now, that's not very original and not very creative,
but you get the point.
So the next time any posts go on polivedriver.com,
I'll get a notification from my Chrome browser
saying that PoliceDriver has a new post.
Very, very cool stuff.
Adds a lot of traction to your website.
Gets a lot of traffic back to your website.
But I think the stats on PoliceDriver
is about 100 or so people actually subscribe,
which is amazing to me.
So, let's take a look at how this all works.
So, before we get started on OneSignal,
we actually have to implement the plugin on our website.
So I'm going to go over to Security Marketing Solutions.
I've already, or actually, larrysnow.me.
And I've already typed in OneSignal.
So it's one word when you're looking for it
in the plugin directory.
And it's OneSignal Free Web Push Notifications.
You'll click on Install Now.
And click Activate.
Okay, once it's installed, you'll see something down here
in the bottom left-hand side of your panel
that says OneSignal Push.
You click on that.
And it's going to say at the top,
Your setup is not complete.
Please follow the Setup guide
to set up your web push notifications.
Both the App ID and the REST API keys are required.
So, we're going to go through this step by step.
We've already created our OneSignal account,
and we're logged in.
Our next step is to create a web push app
over on OneSignal.
So I like to do the plugin version first,
because it actually gives you
the step-by-steps on what you need to do,
versus me telling you, we can just follow step by step.
So we need to go over here to,
so, let me just back up a little bit.
So, if we go under settings,
we click on OneSignal, the homepage link,
and I have two other websites here.
It wants us to add a new app.
So we'll click on the plus.
We'll add in our app name,
and this will be larrysnow, like that,
and I'll click on create.
And then it's going to ask you
what type of platform are we going to configure.
And we're going to configure the web push,
so we'll click that, and click next.
Then we're going to go over to Website Builder,
click on WordPress,
and we're going to add in our site name.
So we'll do Security Marketing Solutions,
our URL,
and our default icon.
Now, this is something
that you'll have to upload to your website.
And so what I usually do is just grab it from our website
and post the link in there.
So I'll go over to our media library on our website.
There we go, media library.
Let's look for our icon.
This is it right here.
We'll pick that one.
So we'll just grab this URL, just copy that in.
Over to our OneSignal, paste.
Now, it says 192 by 192 or larger,
so I put in 200 by 200.
Just keep that in mind.
Now, if your website is not HTTPS,
you have to do some more configurations.
So it says over here that your website works best
when it uses HTTPS.
So, please keep that in mind
when you're setting something up like this.
Click save.
So now I have my app ID and my API key.
So we can put that over into the plugin.
We're going to skip Safari ID for now.
We're going to go down to the rest of the settings here,
click on Sent Notification Settings.
So, we do want to use the notification icon.
Uses post's featured image
for Chrome's large notification image, sure.
Hide notifications after a few seconds.
So, we have yes on Mac OS X
or no on other platforms,
and we have yes by default or no.
So, I'm going to say, I'm just going to keep it as the default.
We want to probably put something in here,
like New Post on Security Marketing Solutions.
We also have the option
to send notifications to iOS and Android platforms.
I'm going to skip that for now.
So, this is what our message is going to look like.
So, kind of like what we already saw on policedriver.com,
and it has some other features here as well.
So we can use alternate full-screen prompt, automatically
prompt new site visitors to subscribe to push notifications.
I actually turn that off on PoliceDriver,
and I kind of made it passive,
so when people see the bell, they click on it and subscribe.
But you can have it right when they come to the webpage.
You might have seen these.
It'll have a little popup
or just a little box that says,
hey, do you want to subscribe,
or do you want to allow push notifications?
And it'll say allow or block.
And you have that option.
So, I'm just going to leave it the way it is right now.
Just going to take all of the default options here.
So our only theme option here is red or white.
So I like red, because it kind of stands out,
and we also have other positions.
So we can put it on the bottom-left or the bottom-right.
And we can also set the size.
I have it set at medium.
And then there's a whole list of text customizations
and notifications when people subscribe,
unsubscribe, and tips and stuff like that.
So I'm just going to leave that as-is, all default.
Obviously you go in there and put in your own specific
notifications that you want to add.
And if we scroll down, it'll give you an option
for a welcome notification,
which is what we saw on PoliceDriver
when we clicked on subscribe.
It says welcome.
It said PoliceDriver.Com, policedriver.com.
Obviously, you want to be more creative.
So we can put in something in here that says thanks.
Well, that says thanks for subscribing,
and I'll probably put in Welcome to SMS!
Something like that.
And we could just leave the default URL.
So, here's where we get the automatic notification settings,
and I'm just going to leave that as default.
And we can actually put in UTM tracking parameters,
which is fantastic.
I'm just going to leave that as-is right now.
Obviously I had to come back
and put in my customizations in there.
If you're not familiar with UTM tracking,
I did a video on that.
You can do look at it here,
and it was a quick review of the URL builder,
the Google Campaign URL Builder,
also known as UTM tracker.
And then there's some advanced settings.
So I'm just going to leave everything the way it is.
Click Save.
So now that we have all our configuration,
we go back to OneSignal, and we click finish.
And the rest are native apps and stuff,
so I'm not going to do anything with that,
and the other two are the Amazon Echo
and the Google Chrome apps.
I'm not participating in those,
but if you are, you can turn those on,
and people can get notifications through your apps,
through the Amazon Echo, and that type of thing,
which is really cool.
Actually, Amazon Echo is coming soon, which is awesome.
All right.
So let's go take a look
at what it looks like on the outside of the website.
And there it is, all the way down at the bottom.
I'd probably make it a little bigger.
It's hard to see all the way down there.
And I'd probably move it up a little bit.
There's ways where you can finesse exact location of it
on your website.
So, here it is down here.
It does work.
Click on here,
and it has a little popup.
Chrome wants me to allow it or block it.
I'm going to click Allow.
And down here, it says thanks for subscribing,
and up here, it says Welcome to SMS!
Thanks for subscribing.
Now, the next time I post a,
and so the next time I publish a post
on larrysnow.me, I'll get a notification,
right on my browser.
Very, very cool.
Thanks so much for watching this video.
I really appreciate it.
If you like the video, give it a thumbs up,
because that gives me some feedback
that you actually enjoyed the video.
If you want to know more about me,
come to this website, larrysnow.me,
and I'll see you in the next video.