Overcoming Challenges with Web Push Notifications in Your Next.js Application

Building a seamless push notification system is crucial for engaging your users effectively. Recently, I developed a notification feature within a Next.js-based social media platform, leveraging the Ably Push Notification service due to limitations with WebSockets in Next.js. While the implementation largely succeeded, I encountered common hurdles—particularly, notifications being marked as spam and not performing as intended.

Understanding the Core Issues

Despite configuring various notification parameters such as icons, badges, TTL, tags, collapse keys, and settings like renotify and silent, the messages often end up flagged as spam or ignored by users’ devices. This can undermine the purpose of timely notifications and diminish user engagement.

Key Objectives for Effective Notifications

To enhance your push notifications, aim to achieve the following:

• Device Wake-Up: Ensure notifications prompt devices to activate and alert users promptly.
• Visibility: Display your notifications clearly in the notification bar for immediate user attention.
• Branding: Show your app’s logo or icon instead of generic or default icons like Chrome.
• Grouping Similar Notifications: Use tags or collapse keys so related messages combine, preventing clutter and confusion.

Enhancing Your Notification Strategy

1. Proper Configuration of Notification Payloads

Double-check your payloads to ensure all relevant fields are correctly set. For example:

• Use the icon and badge fields to display your brand imagery.
• Assign meaningful tag and collapse-key to group related notifications.
• Set ttl (Time To Live) to define how long notifications should be kept.

• Use renotify:true if you want users to be alerted again when a new notification replaces an existing one.

• Avoiding Spam Triggers

Even with correct settings, browsers and devices can classify notifications as spam if they perceive excessive or irrelevant alerts. To mitigate this:

• Send notifications sparingly and only relevant to user interests.
• Personalize content to increase user engagement.

• Ensure your domain is trusted and properly configured with service workers and HTTPS.

• Implementing Action Buttons

Adding actionable options like “Like,” “Reply,” or “Dismiss” enhances interactivity. Most browsers support notification actions via the actions array in your payload. However, note that support varies across platforms and browsers, so testing is essential.

**Is Action Support Possible