Rich Push Notification

What rich push adds

A standard push is a title and a line of text. Rich push adds a media layer: a product image, a GIF, action buttons (buy, save, learn more), and on modern devices a carousel or a short video.

In e-commerce the difference is decisive: a price dropped notification and the same notification carrying a photograph of the specific product the person looked at yesterday are two different experiences.

Implementation

iOS, through a notification service extension

On iOS, rich push requires a notification service extension — a separate module in the app. When the device receives a push flagged mutable-content: 1, iOS runs the extension, which downloads the media from the URL in the payload and attaches it before display.

{
  "aps": {
    "alert": { "title": "Price drop", "body": "Nike Air Max sneakers" },
    "mutable-content": 1
  },
  "image_url": "https://cdn.example.com/products/nike-air-max.jpg"
}

Without the extension, mutable-content is ignored and the notification appears without the image.

Android, natively through FCM

Android supports rich push natively: the image is passed in the image field of the notification payload. No extension is needed.

The components

Personalization is the point

The scenarios where rich push earns its cost:

• A price drop on a viewed product — the image of that specific item from the person’s history
• Cart recovery — a photo of the item in the cart plus a complete the order button
• A recommendation after the last purchase — complete the look with an accessory image
• A personal promotion — a banner with the person’s name and an individual offer

For those, the payload is generated dynamically on the server per user rather than taken from one template.

Common mistakes

• Ignoring the notification service extension. Sending an image URL with no extension on iOS delivers a notification with no picture, and the error only surfaces in testing.
• Heavy images. iOS gives the extension a limited window to fetch media. If the file is large or the network is slow, it times out and no image appears. Keep JPEGs under about 500 KB.
• One image for everyone. Without personalization, rich push loses its main advantage and becomes an expensive banner.