Proof of Concept

Before implementing any software solution, businesses want data to understand if a service and its provider are the right fit for their organizational goals. A Proof of Concept (PoC) allows businesses to validate the performance of a solution without getting too far into the weeds.

With OneSignal, businesses want to know how they can test push notifications & in-app messaging before investing more time and resources into a full blown implementation. We get asked by prospective customers a handful of times each week for our recommendation for a PoC.

In this guide, we tell you what to expect when conducting a PoC, outline key considerations, and provide you with recommendations that will help you as you embark on the process.

If your company is thinking about building push notification functionality internally, there are many things you should consider before doing so. Upfront development, ongoing maintenance costs, and bandwidth considerations are all obstacles that must be conquered before a company can send a single push notification.

If your business is primarily going to send transactional messages with little user segmentation and you have robust engineering resources, building this functionality may be a viable option.

Even so, buying a push notification system can be more affordable due to the complexities surrounding building the system and ensuring that your messages get sent to the right audiences. Here is an extensive analysis of the costs and considerations of Build vs. Buy.

Identify the most important ways you want to successfully move a user metric. These will vary based on your business, so select ones that have the biggest opportunities to demonstrate value.

The following are some key examples by industry:

• E-commerce: Order tracking, cart abandonment, promotions, price drops
• Media & Entertainment: Re-engagement, event updates, subscription, loyalty
• Social & Gaming: Activity, social proof

The PoC setup process is crucial for outcomes. You will want establish the test in an environment with a large enough audience to determine the value. Statistical significance can be defined by the organization.

The easiest approach is to select an application or website to get enough subscribers to make the POC worthwhile. The rule of thumb is that you will be able to get 50% of mobile application users to subscribe to start but no more than 5% of web site visitors.

To get to these percentages of opt-in, it will take several weeks or months. For a PoC, you only need to get a statistically significant number of users opted in to test your business value; approximately a few thousand.

Segments allows you to target specific audiences based on different attributes. You could either go with simple segmentation like sending more messages to frequent visitors and fewer to less active subscribers, or more complex segmentation like segmenting based on user activity, location or interests.

The more personalized and relevant a message is, the higher the engagement rate. Here are more specific tips on how to segment your audience in OneSignal.