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Dive into mobile app deep linking
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Capturing and holding the interest of users is a mounting challenge for marketers amid decreasing attention spans. The urgency to simplify and expedite the user journey—removing any obstacles that could dampen engagement or hinder movement down the funnel—has never been greater. In this environment, mobile app deep linking serves as an essential strategic component, directly guiding users to specific content or actions within an app to significantly improve the user journey, boost engagement, increase conversion rates, and improve key metrics like return on investment (ROI) and retention.
By ensuring a frictionless transition from ads or mobile websites straight to specific in-app destinations, deep linking directly addresses the modern user’s expectation for immediate and relevant content. It is a critical tool for marketers striving to cut through the noise and provide a direct and efficient pathway that connects users instantly with the content they clicked for.
What is deep linking?
Mobile app deep linking is a technology that launches an app and opens a specific page once a user clicks a URL on a web page or in another app. Implementing deep links optimizes the user experience and increases conversion rates. Let’s look at the various use cases for this technology, and how to create a deep link for your own marketing campaign.
Why is deep linking important?
First, let’s look at the customer journey from the most important perspective–that of the customer. Putting ourselves in their shoes, imagine that you’re scrolling through Facebook on your phone and you see an ad for a pasta recipe that looks perfect for dinner.
You click on the link, which takes you to the brand’s app, assuming it’s already installed. It then opens on the homepage of the app. Now you have to try to find that pasta recipe among hundreds of pasta recipes. It’s safe to say that unless you happen upon that recipe in-app pretty quickly, you’ll likely close the app and go back to scrolling on Facebook. From the user perspective, this is a frustrating experience, and there’s a high probability it will result in uninstalling the app.
Now, looking at it from the app marketer’s perspective, you had a link click and session but it resulted in churn. The user will be less likely to engage with your ads in the future, remembering their less-than-ideal experience.Deep linking provides a much more streamlined journey. If the ad used a deep link instead, the user would be directed to the relevant content in-app, landing on the page of that exact recipe. Even if they don’t have the app installed, they’ll be taken to the app store and can thenbe directed to the recipe page following download, via a deferred deep link.
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In another example, let’s say you want to re-engage inactive users with a coupon. In this campaign, users would receive a push notification directing them to the relevant product’s page in your app with a single tap, without having to search for it or manually type a coupon code.
Mobile app deep linking makes guiding users through any kind of multi journey between mobile web and apps much easier for users, including omni-channel and multi-platform experiences. In a nutshell, deep linking:
- Boosts engagement
- Optimizes user acquisition
- Increases ad conversion rates
- Improves app retention rates
- Enhances trust and brand reputation
Learn more about deep linking best practices to maximize your return on investment (ROI) with deep linking campaigns.
Which type of deep links to use
Of course, while the face value of the user journey is completely simplified, in the back end there’s a bit more happening. This will depend on the type of link you choose to use, as well as whether or not the user already has your app downloaded on their phone.
At a high level, there are two primary kinds of deep links: Direct and deferred deep links.
Direct deep linking
Direct deep links only direct users to an app if it’s already installed. If the app is not installed, the link can’t reach the endpoint of an app, and an error message is displayed. This error message will not appear with deferred deep linking, which is what Adjust uses. More on that in a second!
Direct deep links are useful for retargeting campaigns where an app marketer is solely interested in targeting users who have installed the app to convince them to return. This may be reactivating churned users, or incentivizing app sessions in general.
Deferred deep linking
Deferred deep links are more complex than default deep links. They can direct users to the App Store or Google Play Store if the user does not have the app installed. Once the app is installed, it can then open to the original page that the user was directed to. Deferred deep linking is also sometimes referred to as indirect deep linking, where the deep link routes a user via a domain (like Adjust) before taking them to the in-app destination.
With deferred deep linking, if a user clicks an e-commerce app’s ad for a pair of shoes but doesn’t have the app installed, they will first be routed to the relevant store for download. When they open the app, the product page will load.
Deferred deep links are only made possible through a deep linking solution like Adjust’s TrueLink. They’re created via a software development kit (SDK) integration. Check out how to set up deep links for iOS or how to set up deep links for Android.
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Deep link fallback (redirect)
A deep link fallback changes the usual practice of sending users to the app store if they don't have your app. It allows for redirection to an alternative location, such as your mobile website, instead.
Employing a fallback deep link doesn't alter the behavior of deferred deep links. Therefore, if a user later installs the app, they will still be directed to the specific path intended for them.
Contextual deep linking
Contextual deep links are direct or deferred deep links with additional parameters that marketers add themselves. The idea of contextual deep linking is that marketers receive more contextual information because there is more information stored in the custom parameters of the link, like promotional codes, referring sites, etc. This provides an increased number of tailored insights at the analysis stage—to help determine behavioral or performance patterns for strategic enhancement.
How to create a deep link
Adjust’s TrueLink simplifies and streamlines the process of creating multi-platform, omni-channel links by enabling marketers to generate an all-purpose link. Without TrueLink, the manual process of creating deep links presents pain points and tends to be a time sink for marketing teams. Having to implement the links within the app to point users to their desired destinations can cause unnecessary back-and-forth between developers and marketers. It can also increase the chance of human error creeping in. Like any URL, a deep link doesn’t work if there’s a typo in it, and even the best engineer is prone to occasional typos.
Having a solution like TrueLink, which automates deep link creation means you can rely on links that work, while freeing up time and resources for campaign optimization and strategy.
TrueLink allows marketers to instantly generate ready-to-use, all-purpose deep links for Android, iOS, and more in Campaign Lab, greatly reducing hassle while improving reliability. True Link deep links can also be customized, personalized, branded, and short—empowering your brand to boost reputation, trust, and engagement. With TrueLink, you can create links for any platform or environment (including Android and iOS) in a single click, but Android App Links and universal links can also be generated individually.
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Deep linking on Android
The Adjust Android SDK enables you to use direct and deferred deep links to route users to specific pages in your app. There are two methods via which this is enabled: URI scheme deep links and Android App Links (available on Android 6.0 and up).
The former are standard deep links where the URI scheme can be leveraged for direct and deferred journeys, the latter is an Android-specific link that allows opening of URLs in a designated-default app without the disambiguation dialogue that traditional deep links will prompt users with. In the case of Android App Links, if the app is not installed, a specified web location can be opened instead.
To set up a TrueLink deep link for your Android app, you’ll start on the Campaign Lab tab on your Adjust dashboard.
- Click Custom Links.
- Choose + New link.
- Select your app(s) for the deep link.
- Fill out your channel, campaign, adgroup, and creative parameters.
This will generate your deep link, which you can now use in your campaign.
Deep linking on iOS
Since the rollout of iOS 9.2, the context in which URI schemes can be employed has been limited. This makes it essential for developers to use Apple’s own universal links for direct deep linking on iOS.
Creating universal links
To set up universal links with TrueLink for deep linking on iOS, Campaign Lab makes the process as simple as possible. During app setup, the universal link is already configured in AppView, meaning when creating a new iOS deep link, Campaign Lab is able to grab the universal link and use it to generate a deep link. Once you’ve configured an app scheme and enabled universal linking in AppView, you can:
- Click Custom Links.
- Choose + New Link.
- Select your app(s) for the deep link.
- Add a name to your top-level channel, campaign, adgroup, and creative parameter
You can view more detailed instructions about setting up universal links with Adjust.
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Getting started with deep linking
Mobile app deep linking is made easy with Adjust’s Engage and TrueLink. Where there was previously no one-size-fits-all solution for all scenarios, we now have you fully covered for frictionless, scalable, engagement-driving deep linking.
Reach out to your contact person or request a demo to see, hands on, how we can take your deep linking to the next level.
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