Increasing notification opt-in with product psychology

The scene

Michael Harrower

Head of Product Design · Disciple

Push notifications (PNs) are one of the major selling points of an app over a website. Disciple's offering focused on this as a differentiator against similar web-based platforms, but PN opt-in rates were poor and the team couldn't figure out why.

There were ideas from various team members, such as making the prompt clearer/easier to read, prompting the user more often, prompting them earlier, offering a subscription discount and using email prompts. But when I looked at the problem through the lens of behavioural design, none of them were addressing the actual cause.

The problem

The prompt wasn't broken. The timing was.

Across all Disciple communities, the average push notification opt-in rate was 18.7%. The prompt was presented during signup, the first ~2 minutes of a user's interaction with the app. BJ Fogg's Behaviour Model helped clarify why this was failing: behaviour happens when motivation, ability, and a prompt converge at the same moment. New users had the ability to opt in, but they didn't have any motivation to do so.

18.7%

Average opt-in rate

~81%

Members unreachable by push

Signup

Where the prompt appeared

The work

Once I could see the timing problem clearly, the solution was straightforward. The question was where in the product motivation was actually highest.

Phase 01

Applying Fogg's Behaviour Model

BJ Fogg's BMAP model (Behaviour = Motivation × Ability × Prompt) gave me a useful diagnostic frame. When the user is signing up, they haven't yet experienced anything that would give them motivation to allow notifications. During that process, their goal is to try the app out and assess whether it's worth using.

Plotting the prompt on the BMAP graph, it was clear ability was high because allowing notifications only took a single tap. However, motivation was very low, because of the timing. Motivation levers consist of:

Anticipation (avoiding fear, seeking hope)
Sensation (seeking pleasure, avoiding pain)
Belonging (seeking acceptance, avoiding rejection)

Phase 02

Finding the High-Motivation Moment

I looked for the moment in the user journey where motivation to receive notifications would be at its highest. The answer was obvious once framed that way: directly after a user posts or comments for the first time. At that moment, they can be:

Nervous about how their post/comment will be received (anticipation).
Apprehensive about being accepted in the community (belonging).

They want to know if someone responds. So instead of prompting during signup, we showed it immediately after a post or comment was submitted, with the copy “Want to be notified if someone replies? Enable push notifications” The copy was now tied to the user’s motivations.

Phase 03

Implementation

The implementation was deliberately minimal. We removed the prompt from signup entirely and added the prompt directly after a post or comment is published. The copy was contextual and specific. The change was small enough to ship quickly and clean enough to measure clearly.

The outcome

+180%

Opt-in rate increase

18.7%

Baseline opt-in rate

52.4%

New opt-in rate

New UI components needed

Opt-in rates increased by 180%, rising from 18.7% to 52.4%. The change required no new UI components and no re-prompting journeys.

What I learned

Diagnosis before solution.

The team had several plausible fixes ready to go. The BMAP work showed that all of them were addressing the prompt, when the real issue was the timing. Without that framing, we'd have likely not improved the prompt’s performance as much.

You have to meet the user’s motivations.

You can't convince someone to care about notifications before they have anything to be notified about. The job wasn't to make the prompt more persuasive. It was to find the moment where the user was already persuaded.

Increasing notification opt-in with product psychology

The prompt wasn't broken. The timing was.

Applying Fogg's Behaviour Model

Finding the High-Motivation Moment

Implementation

Boosting engagement with a new home screen feature