Opt-in and permission

A Nudge can only reach people who allowed notifications in the browser. The dashboard Opt-in studio controls the prompt people see before (or instead of) the native permission dialog.

Permission is close to a one-time resource. A visitor can say yes once, and a no in the browser's own dialog is hard to undo. Everything on this page is about spending that one question well.

Four ways to ask

Posture is a single setting that moves timing, frequency and the give-up point together. There are four stops.

Gentle. Never asks on its own. Visitors subscribe through the bell or your own buttons.
Considerate. Waits for a second page view, asks once, and gives up politely after three tries.
Persistent. Asks on the first visit and keeps trying for about six weeks.
Aggressive. Asks immediately on page load and never stops trying.

The stops are shortcuts, not limits. Change a field underneath them and the studio calls your setup Custom, which is a normal place to end up.

Why Considerate is the recommended one

A first page view tells you nothing about whether someone wants to hear from you again. Asking there spends your one question on an audience that is mostly leaving, and every dismissal you collect makes the next, better-timed ask harder.

A second page view is a cheap filter. The visitor came back or kept reading, so the question has something behind it. Asking once and stopping after three tries keeps the people who said "not now" askable later, instead of turning them into a permanent no.

Aggressive is the one posture the product argues with. Select it and the studio tells you what it costs before you save.

Your own box, or the browser's dialog

Most sites show a branded box first and open the browser dialog only after the visitor accepts it. You can also ask through the browser directly.

Your own box adds a step: only visitors who say yes there ever see the browser's own dialog. Asking through the browser directly removes that step, so more people reach the real question, and a no there is harder to undo. Neither is right for every site, which is what the A/B test below is for.

The automatic ask waits for a person

An automatic ask does not fire on page load alone. It waits for a sign that somebody is actually there: a pointer move, a key, a touch, or a scroll. A tab that opens in the background and is never touched is never asked, because a prompt nobody looked at is a dismissal you paid for.

Where a browser will not ask without a click first, we show your own box instead, automatically, and the visitor's click on that box is what opens the browser dialog. There is nothing to configure and nothing to get wrong. It is decided per visit.

The prompt A/B test

Opt-in → Prompt A/B test runs a 50/50 comparison. Half of visitors keep today's settings (arm A), half get the variant (arm B). Arms are assigned deterministically per browser, so a visitor who comes back stays in the arm they were put in, and every opt-in event carries the arm it happened in.

The deciding metric is subscribers per 1,000 page views. Accept rate is the tempting number and the wrong one: an arm that asks fewer and better-chosen visitors wins on accept rate while producing fewer subscribers. Page views is the one denominator both arms share.

Page views, prompts shown and subscribers are counted the same way on both sides, so those are what the table compares. An accept is not the same event in both arms. In one it is a click on your own box, in the other it is the browser permission itself.

Change one variable. The surface variants change the prompt surface and nothing else: same delay, same caps, same snooze. A win tells you what caused it. Picking a whole posture as variant B moves timing, caps and snooze at the same time, so a win cannot be traced to any single setting. That is still a fair test of a different tempo, just not an answer about one field.

Changing the variant restarts the measurement. The comparison appears once both arms have enough page views, and zero subscribers in the first days is ordinary rather than a broken test.

Snoozes and attempt caps

Two settings decide how often one visitor can be asked at all.

Lifetime attempts. How many times the automatic prompt appears to one visitor before it stops for good. Zero means no limit.
Snooze after a dismissal. How long to wait before asking again. With backing off turned on, each "not now" doubles the wait: 14, 28, 56 days.

These are the settings that decide whether your opt-in still works a year from now. Re-asking somebody who just closed the prompt converts almost nobody, and it pushes a soft "not now" toward the one answer you cannot recover from. Backing off keeps that visitor askable on a later visit, once the site has earned it.

The What each setting would have done chart replays your real page views through each posture's rules, using each visitor's own history. Snoozes people already earned stay in place, so those bars are a floor, not a promise.

iOS and iPadOS

Safari on iPhone and iPad only offers web push after the visitor adds the site to the Home Screen. The dashboard can show that path when iOS is detected. There is no workaround that skips Apple’s Home Screen step.

The prompt must follow your own consent and cookie setup. If you use Consent Mode or a CMP, wire GTM so the SDK only asks after consent. See Google Tag Manager.

Test the prompt

Use a normal browser window (not a dashboard preview iframe).
Allow notifications.
Confirm a new subscriber in Audience.
Mark your device as a test device before you send.