How to deliver push notifications with real-time location context
By: Bersabel Tadesse
Adding rich notifications to mobile applications allows developers to better engage with users in the moment. In fact, studies show that adding rich notifications to your application can increase direct opens by as much as 50%.
Use the Static Images and Tilequery APIs to quickly create rich notifications that are hyper-targeted and contextually personalized to reach users in real-time. When combined with a customized map style, including custom data added to the map, notifications go from a single line of text that’s likely to get lost in a sea of notifications to an intrinsically relevant image with immediate location context that encourages users to click through — increasing the chances of the user engaging with your app.
How it works
The Static Images API provides the map images for the enriched notification based on the parameters set in the application. As the user moves around, the application runs in the background and the Tilequery API retrieves the closest results from the data set, sending a push notification displaying a map image and additional information.
Let’s take a look at these tools in action. In the demo below, we’re alerting a user to the closest wifi spots as they travel through New York City. Once found, the push notification to their phone displays the distance to the closest hotspot as well as a static map of where the hotspot is located.
Start building
Want to build your own custom alerts? Read our documentation to learn more about building with the Static Images API or Tilequery API, then show us what you #builtwithmapbox on Twitter.
Increase mobile engagement with rich notifications was originally published in Points of interest on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.