Dive into mobile app deep linking

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 strategy, directly guiding users to specific content or actions within an app to significantly improve the user journey, increase the chances of conversion, and improve return on experience (ROX).

By ensuring a seamless transition from ads or mobile websites straight to targeted in-app destinations, deep linking directly responds to the modern user’s expectation for immediate and relevant content. It offers a critical tool for marketers striving to cut through the noise, providing a direct and efficient pathway that connects users instantly with the content they desire.

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 campa

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 customer’s side, it was a frustrating experience, and they may have decided to uninstall 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 customer will be less likely to engage with your ads in the future, remembering their less-than-ideal experience. Deep linking would provide a much more streamlined journey. If the ad used a deep link instead, the customer would be redirected to the brand’s app directly on the page of that exact recipe.

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.

Adjust also enables the possibility of indirect deep linking, where the deep link routes a user through our domain before taking them to the appropriate place in-app. This process allows Adjust to check whether the user has the app installed and whether the correct scheme or intent is in place.

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.

So, for example, 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. 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.

The manual process of creating deep links can be full of pain points and can become a huge time sink. Having to implement the links within the app to point users to their desired destinations can cause unnecessary back-and-forths 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.

The solution? A tool that generates deep links. Having a solution that automates deep link creation frees up the time and resources needed that can otherwise be spent on the actual optimization of campaigns and strategy.

Adjust allows marketers to instantly generate ready-to-use deep links for Android and iOS with Campaign Lab, greatly reducing hassle while improving reliability.

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 deep link for your Android app, you’ll start on the Campaign Lab tab on your Adjust dashboard.

1. Click Custom Links.
2. Choose + New link.
3. Select your app(s) for the deep link.
4. Fill out your channel, campaign, adgroup, and creative parameters.

This will generate your deep link, which you can now use in your campaign.

Mobile app deep linking is complicated—there is no one-size-fits-all solution that works in all scenarios. Fortunately, Adjust has you fully covered across all key scenarios and empowers you to use the best strategy to make deep linking functional and scalable. Ready to get started? Learn how to set up deep linking for iOS and Android with Adjust. Or, request a demo to see, hands on, how we can get your deep linking started.