App Visibility and Deferred Deeplinking

by Vinayak Kini

When a user on his mobile lands on your website, he finds interesting content and starts reading it. It would be great to have the user on your app and give him the native experience. But how can one achieve this? A novice approach would be to have a banner with the app store link. Ideally, we would like to redirect the user to the particular content in the app when he clicks on the banner. But this takes the user to the App Store irrespective of app being installed on the device. If the user installs the app and opens it, how do we redirect the user to that particular content? Here comes the deferred deeplink to the rescue!

Let’s see how can we tackle these issues

Apple Smart Banner

The simplest way to let your web user know that you have an app is through the smart banner. It just requires a single line <meta> tag with app-id and other params to be added to your webpage. Safari app takes care of the rest. Yes, you got it right. it works only on Safari and not on other browsers. Now when the user launches your website on Safari, a banner would appear on top of your webpage with either “OPEN” or “VIEW” option depending on whether the app is installed or not. If the app is installed, on click it would launch the app and pass the additional params with which redirection to the same content can be achieved. If the app is not installed it takes to the App Store from where user can install it.

Cons of using Smart banner

• Smart banner isn’t that smart. it works only on Safari as it is Apple provided meta tag and wouldn’t appear on other browsers. You might ask how this might help? As you know most of the iOS users use Safari, showcasing your app using smart banner can help you drive downloads.
• Smart Banner doesn’t support deferred deep link. Once the user installs your app, you would ideally want the user to continue from where he left from the web page. But sadly it’s not supported. Hence you won’t be able to track attribution details.

Links provided by BranchMetrics, Appsflyer, etc

These are third party players that support deeplink. You would require to register with them for an account and configure it with your app details. You also need to integrate their SDK into your app. After configuring the account, you will be able to create a link using their dashboard. You can append attribution details, campaign info and other data you would like to track to the link. You might ask, does this come with a price? Don’t worry, they provide it for free. Do they have limitations like Apple Smart Banner? These links overcome the cons of smart banner with an added advantage. The same link would work for your android and windows app. However you need to design the banner on your web page with this link.

Let’s make it clear how deeplink works when user clicks on the banner.

• If the app is installed: It launches the app and SDK callback would give you necessary details using which you can deeplink to the page.
• If the app is not installed: The Appsflyer/Branchmetrics tracks the IP, Device details, Device Model, OS type, etc and saves them temporarily for few minutes on its server and takes the user to the respective App Store. When user installs and launches the app, The SDK contacts the server and checks if it has any information related to this device and IP address. If found, SDK callback would give you necessary information using which we can deeplink user to the page and track attribution.

Conclusion

Making your app visible to your web users is very important. Also, redirecting the user to the page where he exactly left helps in re-engagement. Now you know how deferred deeplinking internally works, you can make your own setup or use Branchmetrics or Appsflyer to achieve this with no stone unturned.