General information about notifications

What You Need to Know About EMA and ESM Notifications

Information about Push Notifications

The ExpiWell app uses Google's Firebase Cloud Messaging push notifications to send surveys, reminders, and message notifications to participants.

Push survey notifications at ExpiWell offer several advantages that can enhance user engagement, increase response rates, and provide a more seamless survey experience. Here are some key benefits:

Immediate Delivery:

Push notifications are delivered instantly to participants' mobile devices, ensuring that they receive timely reminders or notifications about a survey. This immediacy can lead to a quicker response from participants.

Increased Visibility:

Push notifications can grab the attention of participants, especially if they are sent with concise and compelling messages. This increased visibility can help overcome survey fatigue and encourage participants to take immediate action.

Higher Response Rates:

Due to the real-time nature of push notifications, they can contribute to higher response rates. Participants are more likely to respond promptly when reminded through a notification rather than relying on email or other less immediate communication methods.

Less Storage:

Because these are all text data, the push notification data use is minimal.

Unlimited Notifications:

You can send an unlimited number of push notifications to participants. This enables you to send multiple reminders to do intensive longitudinal assessments for many occasions and many days over many participants. It also frees you up to pilot your study until you feel ready to launch without any constraints.

Monitoring in Real Time:

You can monitor in real-time whether participants have received the notifications.

The main disadvantage is participants need to have an internet connection.

While push notifications offer numerous advantages, it's essential to use them judiciously to avoid becoming intrusive or annoying to participants. Ensuring that notifications are well-timed, relevant, and respectful of participants' preferences is crucial for a positive survey experience.

Given that most smartphone users possess a data plan or have access to Wi-Fi, the benefits of the push notification method surpass its drawbacks. Nevertheless, a solution to this challenge is employing the ExpiWell offline notification function, allowing participants to engage in the project even without internet connectivity. It's important to note that this approach has limitations, as notifications are solely managed within the user's device; we cannot troubleshoot if an error occurs.

General Setup for Push Notifications

More information on how notifications are set up can be found in Survey Scheduling and in the video tutorial below.

FAQ:

Question: One of our participants, who is using an iPhone, has encountered a notification issue. The participant insists that the notification is not delivered to his phone, and I've checked it against the logs. The logs state it as "not delivered & not needed." Why am I seeing this in my logs?

Answer: Typically, the status "not delivered & not needed" refers to the reminder notification, where the participant completed the survey before the reminder.

If you have any questions, please reach out to help@expiwell.com

This walkthrough was recorded in the earlier ExpiWell interface — an updated video for the new dashboard is coming.