What is Mobile Deep Linking and How it Can Boost App Engagement?

Do you know what separates a successful mobile app from an unsuccessful one? User-friendliness, design, demand, effectiveness, and ease of using app. Effective marketing can make a huge difference between a successful app and the one that gets lost amongst the ever burgeoning crowd of daily released apps.

When it comes to deep linking, not many people know what it is. It’s the unsung hero of technology world. Yet web and mobile application development companies use it every day without realizing its existence, or maybe don’t know it has a name. In this blog, you will get some basic ideas about what deep linking in mobile apps is and how it can boost app engagement.

What is mobile deep linking?

Mobile deep linking is a way to seamlessly route mobile users to the best place to view the content clicked, whether it’s on your mobile app or website. It interconnects mobile apps similar to how the internet operates with clickable links. When the user clicks push notification or email link, Deep Linking takes users to a specific areas within the app itself instead of simply loading the app.

Deep links can help open an app, but what else can they do? Not only can an app be launched by using a deep link, it also acts on any information that is contained in that URL. This is where mobile deep linking starts to get really useful. For example, you find a great product on Myntra and share its link with your friend. Your friend will be able to see the product directly on the Myntra app on clicking the link you shared. Here you shared a deep link of the product with your friend. Mobile deep linking enables your users to share and access app content with greater ease. Creating deep links can make the experience of your app much more instinctive.

Mobile Deep linking is especially useful for promotional efforts because it allows you and any third party to open the app when a link is clicked, rather than driving to a website or to the listing of your app listing on the iOS App Store or Google Play.

3 types of deep links

• Basic deep links: Basic deep links route users to app content as long as the app is already installed when the link is opened. They don’t work if the user doesn’t have the app, and will show either an error or a fallback page.
• Deferred deep links: Deferred deep links are built for users who do not have the app installed on their device. People who click on the link will first be redirected to the Google Play or iOS App Store to download the app, and then take the user to the specific "deferred" content immediately after first launch.
• Contextual deep links: Contextual deep links allow apps to direct users to different landing screens depending on where they come from. They store information about where a user wants to go, where the link was clicked, who originally shared the link, and an almost unlimited amount of custom data.

How does deep linking work?

It’s not enough for mobile applications to be fast, reliable, and secure. Users demand a personalized experience. Deep linking allows marketers and business app development companies to calibrate the way users interact with their app.

With deep links, mobile marketers can design personalized campaigns that help providing useful and relevant content. For marketers and developers, deep linking is a magic tactic for engagement and retention because it brings users to specific conversion points within the app, observed by their past behavior or stated interests.

Mobile deep linking provides details about how users install or open app. Mobile app can be opened or installed through deep linked ads, user-to-user content sharing via SMS, email, or social media, or through in-app referrals.

If you’re using a deep link that supports deferred deep linking, you can attribute your referral campaigns, content sharing, and in-app referrals to the services, users, and campaigns that helped users find and use your app.

What are the benefits of Deep Linking in mobile apps?

When you get a push notification about a product on your wishlist that is now on sale, you will tap the link to open the app and add the product to your cart, but a non-deep link will simply leave you off at the home screen of app. You will have to navigate the product listing page.

You might even feel it’s not worth the trouble and you will close the app. Deep links account for better user experiences and frictionless transitions. When you get a push notification about a product on your wishlist that is how on sale, you will tap the link to open the app and add the product to your cart, but a non-deep link will simply leave you off at the home screen of app.

Deep linking can also used to attract new users to your app. Instead of expecting a new or potential user to move from a browser to the app store and conduct their own search for your app, deep link can be used to direct them straight to a particular screen in your app. Deep linking can be used to enhance the on-boarding experience, by sending personalized invitations via deep links.

When a user will open the link, they will be greeted with a personalized view with some registration information pre-populated to make the sign up process seamless. Users who were sent deep links visited the app twice as frequently as users who weren’t sent deep links and showed double the activation rate. Deep linking in mobile apps account for an average 66% rise in conversions.

Concluding note

Mobile deep linking is a way to identify, address and transport users to specific content in apps. Similar as hyperlink, it’s not the mechanism that will change the world, but the way we use them to connect the web together.

Deep linking is an important tool for application development companies providing android app development services and looking to enhance user engagement, determine which campaigns drive users to an app, and improve the on-boarding process.

The future value of deep links lies in how we use them and the new consumer experiences they are going to enable. This will include ways to discover deep links for apps that you have, discovering new apps through deep-linkable relevant content and services, and the transfer of more intelligence across the links themselves.