Enhancing Your Web Push Notification System: Overcoming Spam Filters and Improving User Engagement

Creating an effective push notification system is crucial for engaging users and ensuring timely updates. If you’ve recently implemented push notifications in your web application but find that they’re being marked as spam or not appearing as expected, you’re not alone. Here’s a comprehensive guide to optimizing your push notifications for better deliverability and interaction.

Building Your Push Notification Infrastructure with Next.js

Developers building social media platforms using Next.js often face unique challenges, especially because Next.js’s server-side rendering workflow can restrict certain real-time communication methods like traditional WebSockets. To address this, many leverage third-party services such as Ably for reliable push notifications.

Successful Implementation, but Notifications Are Marked as Spam

After successfully integrating and testing your push notifications, it’s common to encounter issues where notifications end up in the user’s spam folder or are ignored altogether. This often occurs despite all technical elements being correctly configured — including icon, badge, TTL (Time To Live), tags, collapse keys, and other parameters.

Key Challenges:

• Notifications not waking devices or appearing in the notification tray
• App icon not displaying correctly (seeing Chrome icon instead)
• Multiple notifications cluttering the UI instead of collapsing under a single thread
• Difficulty adding action buttons such as “Reply” or “Like”

Practical Tips to Improve Your Push Notifications

1. Ensure Proper Content and Presentation

• Use clear, relevant, and personalized content to reduce spam reports.
• Include recognizable icons, your app’s logo, and compelling titles.
• Set appropriate TTL and priority levels to ensure timely delivery.

2. Fine-Tune Notification Options

• Specify the icon and badge parameters with your app’s branding assets.
• Use tag and collapse-key effectively to group similar notifications, avoiding clutter.
• Confirm that renotify is set to true only when you want users to be alerted again for the same notification.

3. Achieve Device Wake-up and Visibility

• Implement requireInteraction: true if you want notifications to stay visible longer.
• Use silent notifications cautiously; remember that silent notifications generally do not wake devices or show alerts unless managed appropriately.

4. Dispel Spam Filters

• Avoid overly promotional or generic content.
• Respect user preferences — provide easy options to disable notifications.
• Regularly update and review your content strategy to align with best practices and