How to Add iOS Push Notifications to Your App (Easy Method)

Looking for a guide on how to send iOS push notifications and grow your business?

You’re definitely in the right place.

In this article, we’ll show you how to add web push notifications to your Progressive Web App (PWA), create your first push campaign and send it. All this without any coding, and in less than 10 minutes.

Sounds good? Let’s dive right in!

How to Add iOS Push Notifications to Your App

Installing iOS and iPadOS web push notifications to a website isn’t difficult. But it does have a few steps and you’ll want to follow along with this guide step-by-step.

Don’t jump ahead in time at any time and you’ll be fine.

Before you create a welcome push notification campaign, you need to select a push notification service. A push notification service is a software that allows you to create push campaigns without any coding.

We recommend using PushEngage.

Send iOS push notifications with PushEngage

PushEngage is the #1 push notifications plugin in the world.

Push notifications help you grow your website traffic and engagement on autopilot. And if you’re running an online store, PushEngage also helps you grow your sales by helping you create automated eCommerce push notifications.

You can get started for free, but if you’re serious about growing your business, you should buy a paid plan. Also, before buying any push notification service, you should check out this guide to push notification costs.

Here’s a quick glance at what you get with PushEngage:

High-converting automated campaigns
Multiple targeting and campaign scheduling options
Goal tracking and advanced analytics
Intelligent A/B testing
Proven push notification templates to help you get more traffic and conversions
A Dedicated Success Manager

You’ll see that PushEngage is hands down the best bet if you want to build traffic, engagement, and sales for your business. And if you’re on a budget, you can always get a little bit creative with your push notifications.

Let’s go!

Step #1: Create a Free PushEngage Account

Head over to PushEngage and click on Get Started for Free Now:

You can get started with the free plan. But if you’re looking for the most powerful browser notifications, you should select a paid plan based on your business needs. Once you know which plan you want, click on Get Started to create your PushEngage account.

Step #2: Sign Up for PushEngage

Now, it’s time to create your PushEngage account. Start by signing up with an email address or a Gmail ID:

Then, fill out your account details:

And add your credit card information to buy your plan:

If you selected the free account, then your credit card will never be charged any money until you choose to upgrade your plan. And now, you’re all set to get access to your PushEngage dashboard. Just click on Complete Registration and Get Instant Access.

If you’ve used OneSignal or PushAlert before, you’ll see that PushEngage gives you a much cleaner experience from the dashboard. The OneSignal dashboard isn’t meant for advanced campaigns. For that, you’ll need the API more than the OneSignal plugin.

Step #3: Add a Web App Manifest file to Your Website

Think of a web app manifest as a special file that acts like a guidebook for your website when it’s installed on someone’s phone or computer. It’s written in a language called JSON, but you don’t have to worry about that part.

The manifest file contains important information about your web app, like its name, description, icons, and colors. So, when someone adds your website to their home screen or installs it on their device, the browser uses this manifest to know how your app should look and behave.

For example, the manifest tells the browser what icon to use for your app on the home screen or app drawer, so it looks nice and recognizable. It also specifies the colors and theme of your app to give it a consistent and appealing appearance.

Additionally, the manifest includes the URL that should be opened when someone launches your app. This way, the browser knows which page or section of your website to show them first.

Creating a manifest file can be done quickly with online tools that do the hard work for you. We recommend using this free app manifest generator to build your web app manifest in a few clicks and zero coding.

Once you have the manifest ready, you usually name it “manifest.json” and upload it to the root folder of your website.

In a nutshell, the web app manifest is like a manual that makes your web app look and feel just right when people use it on their devices. It’s an essential part of creating a great user experience for your website visitors.

A typical manifest looks something like this:

{
	"name": "PushEngage",
	"short_name": "PushEngage",
	"start_url": "/",
	"display": "standalone",
	"theme_color": "#3b43ff",
	"background_color": "#ffffff",
	"icons": [
		{
			"src": "icon/icon-128x128.png",
				"sizes": "128x128",
				"type": "image/png"
		},
		{
			"src": "img/icon-192x192.png",
			"sizes": "192x192",
			"type": "image/png"
		},
		{
			"src": "img/icon-512x512.png",
			"sizes": "512x512",
			"type": "image/png"
		}
 	]
}

Once you add your manifest file to the root folder of your website server, you need to add a code snippet in the HTML head of your website. The snippet would look something like this:

<link rel="manifest" href="/manifest.json">

If you’re using WordPress and need help adding this code snippet to your site’s header, you can use WPCode to upload the manifest file. It’s one of the best code snippet plugins for WordPress.

Step #4: Install PushEngage to Your WordPress Site

NOTE: If you’re not running a WordPress site, you should check out our installation guides.

You’re done creating your account. So, head over to the PushEngage dashboard and follow along:

Click on Site Settings » Site Details and click the Click Here For Setup Instruction button:

Click on the WordPress tab and click on the Install PushEngage WordPress Plugin button to install the plugin on your website.

Here’s the cool part: When you created your PushEngage account, you already synced your website with your PushEngage account. So, click on the installation link in the PushEngage dashboard to automatically install the PushEngage WordPress plugin to your website.

Step #5: Connect Your WordPress Website with PushEngage

When you’re done installing and activating the PushEngage WordPress plugin, you’ll see the PushEngage onboarding wizard:

The wizard is fairly straightforward. If you’re a new user, click on New? Claim Your Free Account. And if you’ve already signed up, click on Connect Your Existing Account.

Next, you can select your site from the Select a Site dropdown under Connect a registered site if you’ve already registered a site during signup:

Or, you can click Register a new site to add a new site if you have a Premium pricing plan or higher. In the next step, the onboarding wizard will prompt you to install other must-have WordPress plugins.

If you followed each step correctly, you’ll see this success message from the wizard:

You are now ready to create campaigns and push notification popup modals.

Step #6: Test Your Website Manifest

Alright, let’s walk through the steps to test your web app and make sure everything is working smoothly.

First, open your website using the Safari browser on your iPhone or iPad. Make sure your device is running iOS 16.4 or a newer version. Once your website is loaded, you’ll see a Share button. It looks like a square with an arrow pointing up. Tap on that button to open the sharing menu.

In the sharing menu, you should find an option called Add to Home Screen. Click on that option.

Now, the web app will be saved to your device’s Home Screen, just like any other app you download from the App Store.

If everything has been set up correctly, when you open the app from your Home Screen, it won’t open in the Safari browser anymore. Instead, it will feel like using a regular app on your iPhone or iPad.

To let your users know that they can get web push notifications from your app, you can show them a banner on the screen. This banner will prompt them to add your app to their Home Screen and subscribe to the web push notifications. It’s a handy way to keep your users engaged with your app and receive important updates.

So, follow these steps, and you’ll be all set to provide a smooth and app-like experience to your users on iOS devices! For a full walkthrough on testing your push notifications, check out our documentation on iOS web push notifications.

How to Personalize Your Campaigns

Before you create a campaign, you should set up segments and audience groups to send personalized push messages.

Nothing beats the level of personalization you can get by creating segments and audience groups for your push notification subscribers. Go to PushEngage » Audience and start creating segments and audience groups right away.

Under the Segments tab, you can create new segments or edit existing ones:

And if you need even deeper personalization, create an audience group in the Audience Groups tab:

Audience Groups in PushEngage WordPress plugin

If you’re new to push notification segments and personalized push notifications, you should check out our article on how to create segments and our announcement on advanced audience grouping.

The coolest bit is that you can create targeted push campaigns by creating an Audience Group for just your iOS and iPadOS users:

And you can use this Audience Group for your drip campaigns and broadcasts.

How to Create a Push Notification Drip Campaign

Go to PushEngage dashboard and head over to Campaign » Drip Autoresponders and click on Create New Drip Autoresponder:

Then, name your campaign (we suggest something like Welcome Drip), and under Content, select the option that says, “Send notification immediately after user subscribes“):

At this point, you can click on the arrow next to the notification to edit the content of your notification.

If you have a Premium or Enterprise plan with PushEngage, you’ll be able to add more than one notification to create a sequence of automated welcome messages. Just click on Add New Notification and edit the content.

Once you’re done, click on Drip Settings and select the option to send your welcome campaign to all subscribers:

Send push notification to all subscribers

Then, scroll down to set your own UTM parameters to track the push notifications:

And when you’re done, scroll back up and click the Activate Autoresponder button:

And you’re done!

How to Send a iOS Web Push Broadcast

Head over to your PushEngage dashboard and go to Campaign » Push Broadcasts and click on the Create a New Push Broadcast button:

Under the Content tab, add your push notification content:

And you can set up an A/B test to increase your click rates or you can schedule your push broadcasts to get more views. In either case, you should check out our push notification best practices for the best results.

How to Create a iOS Push Notification Popup Modal

A push notification popup modal is a small window that appears on top of a website or mobile app interface to display a message or notification to the website visitor.

The popup modal can be triggered by various events. You can set up popups to get triggered on page visit, on scroll depth, and even on custom actions such as button click.

Usually, you’ll see a call to action on the popup modal such as “Subscribe” or “Allow” to get consent from visitors to send them push notifications. If you follow this tutorial, you can create a popup like this one:

You can create popup modals that can segment subscribers directly or create regular popups that simply collect subscribers with the default attributes such as geolocation and browser.

Head back to your WordPress dashboard. Go to PushEngage » Design:

And you can set up as many popup modals as you please. Of course, you can make sure that they get triggered at different times under Display Options for each popup modal.

The idea here is to give your visitors a solid reason to subscribe. If you need some help with that check out our article on how to create a custom push notification opt-in.

And if you want to create more targeted popup modals, you can use the targeting rules under the Targeting Rule tab:

Enable Targeting Rule WordPress PushEngage

These are global targeting rules and will get preference over targeting rules for individual popup modals. But if you wish, you can create robust targeting rules for each modal by editing them.

For instance, you can create popup modals in different languages to target visitors from different countries.

And if you’d like some templates with a high click-through rate to get started, you should check out this article on high-converting push notification opt-ins.

What to Do Before You Send iOS Push Notifications

You’re almost done.

Before you start sending push notifications, you’ll need to set up a subscription opt-in for your website. Your opt-in will convert web visitors into push notification subscribers. So, this is a critical element.

If you need some inspiration, you can check out this article on high-converting push notification opt-ins. Once you’re done setting up the opt-in, your site can collect subscribers. But how do you even know that your opt-in is working properly?

So, the sensible thing to do is set up a welcome push notification.

Pro-Tip: You should spend some time on a full-scale test of your push notifications. This will troubleshoot the most common problems and you won’t waste your time trying to resolve issues later on.

What to Do After You Send iOS Push Notifications

That’s all for this one, folks!

If you found this article helpful, be sure to drop a comment below.

Getting started with push notifications can seem intimidating. But if you keep an eye on goal tracking and analytics, you should be fine. More importantly, you’ll make a lot more profit with the help of push notification campaigns. Here are a few cool resources to get you started:

If you’re new to push notifications, you should try out PushEngage. PushEngage is the #1 push notification software in the market. And your campaigns will be in safe hands.

So, if you haven’t already, get started with PushEngage today!