What is the best way to ask a user for permissions?

Question

When I go on websites like a blog, they almost all do the terrible mistake of showing me this immediately when I enter the site:

And I think we can all agree that this method only gets blocked, which is terrible for user experience because now you will need to tell the user how to give the site the permission on each browser.

One good approach I came across was the site fading in a custom box on the top, only if you've on the site for long enough, asking if you would like to be notified of new articles. But is that really the best approach

So, what is the best way to ask the user for a permission, like "show notifications"?

Answer 1

One good approach will be to simply educate users about it inside your sites experience.

"would you like to get instant updates from xyz.com" if your shows interest, only then to display the actual content.

Also, onpageload is not right time to display the popup as well. Users are unfamiliar with the app/website yet.

Maybe after finishing a certain flow which shows that user is genuinely interested, the pop would make sense.

Facebook asks for it abruptly after login, but if you decline it, they gracefully handle it by displaying "in case you change your mind..." message.

The idea is simple. By asking for permission for pushing notifications, you are essentially asking for ability to push stuff to them spontaneously. Users will only agree (and end up actually using it) if they are genuinely interested in the content you are serving. Build the interest first, show them the value and then ask for it, rather than it being another distraction before users can actually start using the site itself.