Instagram | Adding titles to organic growth push notifications
User problem: We want to make push notifications easier for users to scan, so they can more easily assess whether a notification is relevant to them. We also want to align with other popular apps, including Facebook, that already use titles.
My role: I came up with three title variants to test: action only, which describes the type of notification, actor only, which the subject of the body (a username) is in the title, and a combination of both that is separated by a colon.
Action only
Pros:
Actor only
Pros:
Actor and action
Pros:
Results: Actor only is the best performing variant, increasing click through rate.
Impact: Actor only notification titles were shipped globally for all organic growth push notifications.
My role: I came up with three title variants to test: action only, which describes the type of notification, actor only, which the subject of the body (a username) is in the title, and a combination of both that is separated by a colon.
Action only
Pros:
- Concise
- Will not truncate
- Easy to localize
- No personalization
- Potentially spammy — users receive many of the same types of notifications on Instagram, so seeing the same title over and over again may feel repetitive
Actor only
Pros:
- Concise
- Will not truncate
- Easy to localize
- Compelling if the actor username is a close friend account
- Does not provide the full context of the notification
Actor and action
Pros:
- Addresses users who care more about the actor and users who care more about the action
- Personalized
- Potential truncation issues
- Less scannable
- Redundant as the same information is reiterated in the title and body
Results: Actor only is the best performing variant, increasing click through rate.
Impact: Actor only notification titles were shipped globally for all organic growth push notifications.