GUIDE
Deep linking 101: Your definitive guide
When considering an app’s potential user base, today’s mobile marketers are faced with the reality of diminishing attention spans and the need to ensure that their users’ online journeys are seamless and easy to navigate. Simplifying the user experience and removing obstacles is essential for maintaining engagement and driving growth-critical KPIs such as conversion rates and retention rates.
The practice of deep linking within mobile app marketing has long been a crucial part of advertisers’ strategies, streamlining and optimizing the user experience by offering a frictionless way to guide users to specific content within an app.
Deep links are a powerful tool for marketers, and a dynamic bringway to bring users to apps from many different platforms, environments, and sources, including ads, mobile websites, push notifications, and social media. However, from both the marketer and user perspective, not all deep links are created equal. In terms of aesthetics—namely link length and branding—and universality—the ability to use one link across multiple platforms—there can be vast differences between the efficacy and success of deep links.
This guide explores the fundamentals of deep linking, its various applications, benefits and best practices, how to effectively measure success, and how you can get started today.
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An example of deep linking
A remarketing campaign is launched by a mobile gaming app keen to bring back inactive users. The campaign is using the offer of free game currency to re-engage this group—within the push notifications sent to these users’ devices, a deep link brings them directly to the app reward page where they can access their currency. From there, a call to action (CTA) encourages users to remain in-app and play the game.
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Understanding deep linking
How does deep linking work?
Deep linking is a technology that directs users from external sources, such as mobile websites or ads, directly to specific content within an app. By doing so, deep links optimize the direct-to-app experience by offering a streamlined journey that meets the modern user's expectation for immediate and relevant content.
Comparing an ad with a deep link to a particular in-app location to an ad linking to the app’s homepage clearly demonstrates the difference between user experiences. Users interested in viewing specific content want to navigate directly to this content, rather than attempting to locate it themselves. Removing barriers and promoting efficiency is how deep linking keeps users engaged, and importantly, keeps them in-app and on the path to conversion.
Deep link URL structure
From the marketer or developer side, deep linking is simply using custom parameters to build a URL scheme. URL schemes are custom protocols used by apps to handle specific actions. While the user experiences a simplified journey, there is a little more going on in the back end, and important setup decisions to make. From the type of deep link chosen to the way the link URL appears to a user, careful decision-making at the early stages of deep linking configuration is essential.
Types of deep links
Deep links can be configured to work in slightly different ways, with direct, deferred, and contextual deep links being the primary choices.
- Direct deep links: These links direct users to specific in-app content if they already have the app installed. They are especially useful for retargeting campaigns where only those with the app installed are being targeted.
- Deferred deep links: These links send users to the app store if the app isn’t installed, and then redirect them to the intended in-app content when they open the app after installation. Deferred deep links are only an option when using a sophisticated deep linking solution like Adjust’s. They are implemented via software development kit (SDK) integration.
- Contextual deep links: These links include additional parameters (added by marketers) that return more information about the user’s journey—such as the referral source—allowing for personalized content delivery and enhanced data tracking. This information is stored within the custom parameters of a link.
An additional deep linking term is fallback, referring to a deep link specifically built for desktop users. Instead of sending desktop users to the app store to download an app, a fallback will direct them to your chosen destination, such as your brand’s website. A redirect works in a slightly different way and is intended for mobile users, overwriting the default store redirect and fallback parameters if applied.
Adjust’s comprehensive deep linking solution, TrueLink, enables you to leverage all of the above types of deep link to ensure every user is given the optimal experience when interacting with your brand and app.
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Shortened and branded deep links
Deep links are far from a one-size-fits-all. Once you’ve landed on the type of link that will work best for your campaign, it’s time to consider how the link will be implemented and how it will appear to users.
A link’s URL structure is not useful solely for getting a user to their intended destination, it also conveys professionalism and encourages trust if configured in the best way. By shortening and branding your deep links, users are confident that they’re redirecting to a legitimate destination. You’re establishing link authenticity, improving brand consistency, promoting brand trust, and increasing click-through rates.
Next-generation deep linking solutions like Adjust’s TrueLink make it possible to shorten and brand your deep links:
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Shortened links: These are usable across multiple campaign types like influencer, QR, SMS, and referral, are character-count compliant, and easily editable without the need to replace links. They promote brand security and can generate QR codes that are easier to scan, and are easily legible.
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Branded links: These are links with an important word or name—such as your app name, company name, or brand name—as their most visible part. They are tailored to your own domain for brand awareness, authenticity, and higher engagement. As one unified, multiplatform domain type, all of your branded links automatically update click URLs in the Adjust dashboard.
Best practice is to implement shortening and branding simultaneously, merging the benefits of both formats and resulting in an optimized link with a structure like this: https://yourbrand.go.link/abc123.
With the appearance of your deep links optimized, it’s time to focus on maximizing performance and marketer efficiency. Adjust’s deep links offer a multi-environment and multi-platform application, meaning that a single link is applicable across your most important environments (web, mobile, messaging, social) and platforms (Android and Apple) without needing to edit anything. Marketer time is not tied up with the creation of multiple alternative links, and the risk of broken links is mitigated.
Android App Links and iOS universal links
When planning the implementation of deep links in your marketing campaigns, it’s important to consider two platform-specific deep link types: Android App Links and iOS universal links, the deep links introduced by Android and Apple, respectively.
Android App Links
Available on Android 6.0 (API level 23) and higher, Android App Links are types of deep links known as HTTP URLs. These route Android device users to specified in-app locations or web pages, in the same way a regular deep link would. They use a HTTPS scheme (whereas other deep links use a URL scheme) to access content, whether it’s in-app or on your website, simplifying the user journey. They can be configured to send users to a specified web page if the relevant app isn’t installed. Regardless of your app being installed or not, a user has instant access to your product.
URL scheme format vs. HTTPS scheme format
URL scheme: myApp://path
HTTPS scheme: https://www.my-website.com/path
Both Android App Links and iOS universal links utilize the HTTPS scheme format.
The key difference between regular deep links and Android App Links is that App Links enable the opening of URLs in associated apps directly—because your app is designated as the default app for a certain type of link—without users being required to select the app. Where regular deep links are used, a user may be required to select the app they want to use to open the link.
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Learn more about adding and handling Android App Links, and Android SDK integration via Adjust.
iOS universal links
Similar to Android App Links, Apple’s universal links (available in iOS version 9 and above) are deep links that form part of a secure linking method for iOS users. They utilizes a HTTPS scheme to ensure that users are directed to the correct content—in the app if they have installed it, on via relevant webpage if not. Universal links are configured to map web pages to in-app locations (“supporting associated domains” in Apple’s terminology), meaning that when a user opens a link and has the app installed, they are automatically rerouted to the relevant in-app location. A unique selling point of universal links is their ability to open a web page from a link within an app.
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When configuring universal links with Adjust, the mapping of web pages to in-app locations is taken care of by us, and we host the required associated domain file on your behalf.
Learn more about setting up universal links with Adjust.
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The benefits of effective deep links
Leveraging deep links to your strategic advantage
As we’ve covered, three of the key benefits of building deep links into your marketing materials in an effective way are boosted conversion rates and retention rates, and a significantly improved user experience.
Check out the benchmarks for a good app retention rate to see how your app measures up.
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The seamless, frictionless journey that users experience when following deep links to your app encourages continued app use and—where the app is not yet installed—increases the likelihood of an install.
Your marketing campaigns will present as more sophisticated, while you’ll benefit from the additional insights gleaned from data points linked to campaign performance.
Key benefits
Some of the key benefits of implementing deep linking include:
- A streamlined user experience: Removing barriers such as signposting and guessed paths makes the journey from link to app instant and seamless.
- Users remain in the funnel: Reducing friction has a direct impact on campaign performance, and, in turn, app revenue. By committing all of your resources to optimizing a single page or set of pages, you improve performance without worrying about user navigation.
- Uptick in user acquisition: The functionality of deferred deep links—delivering potential new app users directly to your page in the app store and one click away from your app— can, unsurprisingly, have a real impact on your user acquisition figures. Once your app is downloaded by a user, they are directed to the in-app content they’re seeking, so have a defined path and purpose. This decreases the risk of churn.
- More data points for campaign optimization: Attribution of deep links allows you to see the source of each conversion, and optimize your marketing strategy accordingly. Your return on ad spend (ROAS) stands to benefit! By adding parameters to a deep link, you’ll gain access to even more invaluable data.
- Unparalleled conversion rates: The conversion rates associated with deep links far surpass those of other types of links, positively impacting your app’s return on investment (ROI) and campaign performance. With improved retention rates also reported, you’re likely to see an increase in your users’ lifetime value (LTV).
Pain points associated with alternative link types
App marketers discovering the powerful impact of deep links often report similar pain points experienced when working with other types of links. Top among these is the need to create multiple deep links for multiple platforms and environments.
Cross-platform and -environment links, such as those provided by Adjust’s TrueLink solution, eliminate this pain point. In addition, they represent a solution to occasional iOS and Android routing issues that can see users landing on the wrong pages and therefore conversion opportunities being missed.
Where marketers have implemented deep links but lack the tech solution to shorten and maintain these links, we often hear pain points around the time-intense nature of manually shortening existing deep links while they’re active, and the risk of human error that this introduces. This underscores the need for an effective automated solution such as TrueLink. To be able to programmatically create branded domain links through a dedicated API exponentially improves the user experience, as well as boost key KPIs such as conversion rate and ROAS.
Look out for more on TrueLink’s full offering a little later in our guide. Hint: we dive into short, branded all-purpose links that work across platforms and environments.
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Putting theory into practice
Applications of deep linking in the real world
Deep linking is versatile in its applications within mobile marketing, enhancing many common processes that drive sustained app growth:
- Driving user acquisition: By guiding users directly from an ad or other external source to specific in-app content, deep links reduce the steps needed to reach the desired destination, increasing the likelihood of conversion.
- Boosting installs: Deferred deep links are particularly effective in driving installs. Once an app is installed, the app opens directly at the content that originally piqued a user’s interest, making the process seamless and increasing the chances of conversion.
- Optimizing onboarding processes: Deep links can be used to streamline the onboarding process by directing new users to specific tutorials, welcome screens, or features that enhance their initial experience with the app.
- Improving engagement: Re-engagement campaigns can benefit greatly from deep linking. By serving personalized copy and creatives with deep links via push notifications, emails, or retargeted advertising in general, dormant users can be reactivated and directed straight to the content that aligns with their previous interests or actions within the app.
- Using deep links in push notifications and smart banners: Push notifications and smart banners that include deep links are powerful formats for driving users (back) to your app, directly to the content that prompted the click. As with all environments and formats, this reduces the friction that might occur if users had to navigate to the content manually. More on smart banners later!
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- Boosting conversions: Deep links can significantly boost conversions by directing users to exclusive offers or specific content. For example, linking users directly to a product page during a sale increases the likelihood of purchase.
- Directing users to exclusive in-app promotions: Targeted deep links can take users directly to promotional content within the app, such as exclusive discounts or limited-time offers, enhancing the urgency and encouraging immediate action. Linking in this way ensures that users are funneled to the special offers or important updates they were enticed with. An example is incentivized friend referral links, per the image below.
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- Omnichannel marketing: Integrating deep links across multiple platforms (for example, email, social media, and web) ensures a consistent and seamless user experience no matter where the user interacts with your brand.
- Cross-promotion with partner apps: Deep links can be leveraged in cross-promotion strategies with partner apps, guiding users from one app to another, enhancing brand collaboration, and expanding user reach.
Deep linking across verticals
While deep linking proves effective across all verticals, some of the most popular use cases are seen in shopping/e-commerce, travel, lifestyle, and finance categories.
For shopping/e-commerce apps, deep links can be used to direct users to specific product pages, special promotions, or personalized recommendations, improving the shopping experience and increasing sales. Imagine a user adding multiple items to their cart before abandoning the session, receiving retargeting with creatives including images of the products they were interested in, and a deep link straight back to the basket. Conversion rates on experiences like these are extremely high.
Travel/lifestyle apps tend to use deep links to take users directly to booking pages, travel deals, or specific destinations, making the planning process more efficient and enjoyable. For example, a customer may start making travel plans on the mobile site, and then be guided to the app to complete a booking. Also, travel deals can be highlighted through social media or mobile sites, with clicks driving users to these specific deals in-app.
Another use case for lifestyle apps is performance tracking (for example in reaching certain fitness goals in a health and fitness app), an encouraging and effective way to keep users engaged.
Deep links in finance app marketing can guide users to specific services, such as account management, payments, or investment opportunities, enhancing user engagement and driving action. Using the app over the mobile site means that users are significantly more likely to interact with additional banking services. For example, users will be more likely to use payment services, increase savings in-app, or take other in-app actions.
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Celebrating deep linking success
Best practices for meaningful results
To maximize the benefits of deep linking, it’s essential to follow best practices such as ensuring deep links are properly tested, using branded and short links for increased trust and engagement, and continually analyzing performance data to make iterative improvements. While deep linking as a concept is straightforward, there are errors to avoid during and following implementation.
Best practices include:
- Consider your target group carefully: Are you targeting users who have previously engaged with your app and therefore are likely to have it installed? Having direct control over where you’re sending these users means more power over their mobile experience.
- Incentivize: The combination of deep link and incentive (with encouraging creatives) leads to high engagement. A friend referral program with deep links to specific rewards can drive action.
- Avoid broken links: As is the case with any type of link, a “page not found” situation is likely to isolate and lose high numbers of users.
- Work with a mobile measurement partner (MMP): Partnering with an MMP like Adjust enables optimized deep linking that results in a more streamlined user experience and ensures every install and session is attributable. In addition to the ease of generating and implementing deep links, processes like testing deep links using Adjust’s Campaign Lab and creating segments with Audiences will result in a more engaged user base.
- Find the right level of engagement: Keeping in touch with app users via email, push notification, and other channels, is undoubtedly a positive way to retain engagement and interest while maintaining brand awareness. Deep links enhance this by taking users directly to the right place in-app. However, it’s as important as ever to remain aware of getting outreach levels just right—not overcommunicating, risking user irritation and isolation. In a world where ad exposure is higher than ever, avoiding “ad exhaustion” is essential.
- Social sharing: Making it possible for users to share app-related progress or milestones via social media (by posting a message and a deep link) is understandably extremely powerful. Embedding your app in a user’s social circle boosts user acquisition, engagement, and brand awareness. Spotify’s “Wrapped” is a great example of this, as are Duolingo’s sharable streaks and Blogilates’ selfie prompts.
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Blogilates and Duolingo
The two strong examples of social sharing pictured above invite users’ social connections to share in their achievements and consider daily workouts or language learning of their own. With a one-click deep link to post to social media, sharing progress and exposing your brand to swathes of potential new advocates could not be easier. Referrals are one of the most powerful marketing channels, and deep linking drives up conversion rates. Combining the two is sure to make an impact.
Measuring success: Using data to guide and optimize deep linking
As mentioned, the advantages of partnering with an MMP for effective deep linking are numerous. Data gathering and data-driven attribution and measurement insights are central to wider mobile marketing success, and deep linking is no different. Not only can you monitor key metrics such as click-through rates, conversion rates, and retention rates—crucial for understanding the effectiveness of your deep linking campaigns—you can analyze and truly understand user behavior and the channels and platforms that deliver the best users. By appreciating how users interact with your app, you can see where improvements can be made and where deep linking is garnering the best results.
By analyzing the user journeys facilitated by deep links, marketers can identify patterns and optimize the user experience to enhance engagement and conversions. Using performance data to make iterative improvements ensures that your deep linking strategies remain effective and continue to drive results. Also, segmenting users based on their interactions with deep links allows for more personalized marketing efforts, improving the relevance and effectiveness of campaigns.
Optimizing deep linking campaigns involves carrying out A/B testing on different deep link strategies and campaigns. This can help to determine the most effective methods for driving engagement and conversions. Once again, it’s important to land on the right tools and analytics platforms for optimizing deep linking. MMPs like Adjust provide robust solutions and dashboards to measure deep link performance, offering insights that help to optimize campaigns and improve ROI.
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Strategic placement of deep links
A smart banner use case
So you’ve refined your deep linking strategy and you know that deep links will be effective for your app and your campaign goals—but where’s the best place to put these links, and what are the best formats? An aspect of strategizing is placement, and one use case gaining in popularity is smart banners. Let’s dive into all things deep linking via smart banners.
What are smart banners?
Simply put, smart banners are pop-ups that appear horizontally across a mobile site and feature a prominent, encouraging CTA that, when tapped, moves users’ browsing experience from site to app. If they don’t have your app downloaded, they are prompted to do so and brought to the relevant app store.
The users you’re targeting with a smart banner are already steps ahead—they have made their way to your site, via an ad or otherwise, and are therefore actively demonstrating an interest in your brand. Research shows that app users are more likely to commit to a brand and make purchases than mobile site users, so bridging the gap between web and app is incredibly powerful.
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Smart banners utilize deep linking to bring users to the desired space within the app, or to the app store to download and then to the desired space (via a deferred deep link). Every converted app user starts their in-app experience exactly where you choose. Whether you want to promote a sales event, product, or piece of content, you’re bringing users directly to the most relevant page.
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The strategic importance of smart banners
Smart banners are considered a strategic priority for mobile marketers for a number of reasons:
- Reduced user acquisition cost: With the banner appearing across your own brand’s site, no paid digital marketing is involved. Smart banners enable a cost-free, organic customer journey that brings more traffic and new users to your app.
- Customizable and unobtrusive: With the branding and positioning handled in-house (for example via TrueLink in Adjust’s dashboard) for your own site, you can ensure that your banner is a natural fit and doesn’t disrupt the site experience.
- Improved conversion rates: The frictionless path between site and app generated by a smart banner brings users quickly and conveniently to the platform where they’re more likely to make purchases. Not only are you improving conversion rates, you’re doing the same for LTV and retention rates.
Adjust’s smart banners solution empowers marketers to create and implement smart banners easily. As always, the Adjust dashboard makes the process of getting started intuitive and straightforward. All customization options are on the table, whether you’re focusing on placement, written content, font, color scheme, button, or imagery. You can even create different banners for different audiences, automatically localized for different languages (hint: your deep link landing pages can be localized too—more on that later). Thoughtful design promotes brand trust and appeals to interested users with the potential to return to your app again and again for meaningful app sessions.
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From the deep linking perspective, a key element of Adjust’s smart banners solution is that it puts you in control of attribution and attribution window settings. Perhaps you want to attribute users to the ad they saw before they reached your mobile site, or attribute them to the smart banner. The choice is yours. Your Datascape dashboard is where you’ll be able to measure your banners’ effectiveness, viewing banner performance data alongside the rest of your Adjust data.
Discover the three simple steps to get started with Adjust’s smart banners.
Web-to-app scripts: enhancing smart banners and other app download links
Whether you’re using a smart banner to prompt users to download your app, or have included this CTA elsewhere across your site or third-party sites (as part of a paid ad or otherwise), web-to-app scripts ensure that the users reaching the download stage are attributed correctly.
A web-to-app script is a script executed on a mobile site that dynamically generates outgoing URLs (Adjust links) on the “Download app” (or similar) buttons based on the parameters from the incoming URL, facilitating correct attribution of mWeb-to-mApp flows. Without such a script, accurate attribution is very difficult, with a lot of key information relating to the referring source(s) lost along the way.
You can customize the mapping of these parameters to ensure that you are capturing information that aligns with your internal analytics tagging structure.
In a nutshell, using this script allows marketers to tie app installs/events back to the original web campaigns.
Learn more about Adjust’s web-to-app scripts.
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Deep linking with Adjust
Engaging high-value users through a frictionless experience
Deep linking is a powerful tool for enhancing user experience, driving engagement, and boosting conversions. By implementing best practices, leveraging advanced strategies, and continually optimizing based on data, marketers can unlock the full potential of deep linking to grow, scale, and achieve their app marketing goals.
The ultimate goals of robust deep linking are a streamlined and less error-prone marketer experience and a frictionless, professional user experience. At the forefront of mobile measurement innovation, Adjust’s TrueLink solution—part of our Engage pillar—represents a future-focused and holistic approach to effective deep linking that drives an uptick in engagement, conversions, and ROI.
Reinforce and enhance your brand’s reputation at every step of the customer journey with strong customization options, so your customers trust your app—making them more likely to convert and buy.
The future of deep linking
The direction of travel for all mobile measurement technologies is embracing the efficiencies and capabilities of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). For deep linking, this creates opportunities such as predictive deep linking with personalized user experiences, based on historical data and behavior patterns. Predictive deep linking has the ability to anticipate user needs and direct users to the most relevant in-app content, enhancing the overall user experience.
Another future development for deep linking is potential expansion into additional verticals and applications in everyday life. As technology evolves, deep linking has the power to disrupt the status quo in many spaces, and not just within the home or office environments. Picture this: you get on a flight, access the in-flight entertainment, and use a QR code within it to link you directly to related information, exclusive offers, etc. Across industries, deep links enable new opportunities for engagement and user interaction.
Adjust’s TrueLink solution
With our focus firmly on the future of mobile marketing, Adjust’s comprehensive TrueLink solution is continually developed and improved, enabling you to stay ahead of the competition and create seamless, personalized user journeys that drive success.
Increase in-app usage, engagement, and conversion rates with frictionless branded experiences that build stronger user relationships and drive high-value users to your app. Automate your deep link generation process so that valuable marketing resources can be dedicated to strategizing and looking at the bigger picture.
Three game-changing aspects of TrueLink are:
- The power of creating multi-platform deep links—single links that are applicable across your most important environments (e.g. web, mobile, messaging, social) and platforms (Android and Apple) with no edits needed.
- The ability to fully brand your deep links.
- The ability to significantly shorten your deep links.
All deep link generation and customization is carried out in your Adjust dashboard, where you can export these links as QR codes too, and where all of your other app marketing processes are already managed. Working from a single dashboard helps marketers to minimize time spent toggling between tools and systems. Enjoy accurate and seamless attribution, including from emerging channels such as QR-code installs, CTV-to-CTV, and CTV-to-mobile.
TrueLink makes it possible to both shorten and brand your deep links:
- Shortened links: These are usable across multiple campaign types like influencer, QR, SMS, and referral, are character-count compliant, and easily editable without the need to replace links. They promote brand security, generate QR codes that are easier to scan, and are easily legible.
- Branded links: These are links with an important word or name—such as your app name, company name, or brand name—as their most visible part. They are tailored to your own domain for brand awareness, authenticity, and higher engagement. As one unified, multiplatform domain type, all of your branded links automatically update click URLs in the Adjust dashboard.
Best practice is to implement shortening and branding simultaneously, merging the benefits of both formats and resulting in an optimized link with a structure like this: https://yourbrand.go.link/abc123.
Amplify your global reach with 11 localization options for deep link landing pages, automatically routed depending on browser language. The page your user sees will default to English if their browser is not in any of these languages.
A TrueLink use case: Completing abandoned user journeys
A tried and tested strategy among shopping app marketers, the “you’ve left something in your cart” email goes a long way towards restarting a customer purchase journey. Deep links can be used within these emails to optimize them and drive greater success rates—instead of having to navigate to the in-cart product page or the cart itself, a deep link will bring the user right back to the point of transaction.
Generating TrueLink deep links
Getting started with TrueLink is straightforward and seamless, with all configuration options within your Adjust dashboard.
To create your links:
- 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 parameters.
- Copy and paste the generated link into your campaign.
- Track the results in the Adjust dashboard.
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Learn more about how to set up deep links for iOS or how to set up deep links for Android and how to get started with TrueLink today.
Expand your app’s reach and build brand trust with customizable, multi-platform links that make the user journey as simple as it is seamless. Request a demo today to experience Adjust’s TrueLink solution for yourself.
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