Key Benefits to Using Mobile App Deep Links vs. Traditional Links

If you want to link to specific locations or pages within a mobile app, then using mobile app deep links is a good option. It can be used in a number of ways viz. via email, notifications, social media, SMS which redirects the users accordingly to the relevant content instead of redirecting them to the respective mobile app’s home screen.

The mobile app deep links take the users directly to the app’s content. In fact, it can be done in the various types of interactions as mentioned below:

- Search Result to App- App to App- Website to App- Ad to App- SMS to App- E-mail to App- Social Media to App- Mobile Phone Search to App

Types of Mobile app deep links:

1) Deferred mobile app deep links: Deferred deep links will direct users to specific content if the application is installed and direct users to the list of the application store if the application is not installed.

2) Standard mobile app deep links: It direct users to a specific part of your application using the URI of your application. The drawback of these is that they will only work if the user has the application installed on their device. Otherwise, they will show the user an error page.

3) Contextual mobile app deep links: These can fulfill the functions of the two previous types of deep links, but also allow more precise tracking and greater relevance for users. It is more useful for both developers and users since these links pass data to an application through the installation and allow not only a better attribution but also a personalized addition.

Why use mobile app deep links?

Initially, the adoption of mobile app deep links in the field of mobile app development was slow as their benefits were unclear to businesses. With the arrival of many new technologies, mobile app development companies now realize the value of mobile app deep links for driving engagement, user experience, promoting their apps, improving the user onboarding process and best tracking marketing campaigns.

In this blog, we will discuss some of the top benefits of mobile app deep links. The list is given below:

1. Great user experience

Users can more easily access the content through mobile app deep links even without navigation need. It helps users to direct specific screens to their mobile application instead of the home screen.

Therefore, if you link to something in your mobile application from any social networks, a website for mobile devices etc., users can surf without interruptions to that content.

2) Improves engagement, user retention, and overall usage

It has been shown that mobile app deep links improve the valuable usage metrics to help businesses in their overall growth.

In fact, the users who are deeply linked showed double the retention rate, double the activation rate and visit the mobile application twice as often as users who had not been deeply linked.

3) Better user onboarding

Through the use of mobile app deep links, users can customize the onboarding experience.

For instance, with contextual deep links, users can provide customized invitations to the mobile application or can include incentives or offers in the user’s onboarding flow.

4) Increases re-engagement of the users

It happens many times when users have your mobile app installed on their devices but inactive for a long period of time. In that case, you can use mobile app deep links to direct them to specific content to encourage use, instead of the generic home screen.

For an instance, you can rehire a user by sending them an automatic notification that links to a new feature, an exclusive offer or another that will encourage them to interact with the application again. Hence, mobile app deep linking is a good way to increase the re-engagement of the users.

5) Strong marketing

Mobile app deep links can help in generating a high revenue and increase sales too according to your monetization strategy.

For an instance, a retailer could use a push campaign that offers a 20% discount for the target users. With the mobile app deep links, it is going to be a place where they can immediately buy from that application’s screen.

6) Revamp the app discoverability

Google indexes the mobile app deep links which means that the content of the mobile application can appear on the search engine results pages as a website would. This ultimately increases the count that new users find your application through the organic search.

7) Gives effective insights

Since deep links can pass data, you can more accurately see which campaigns and sources are most successful in driving users to your application or driving downloads. Is it via deeply linked ads? SMS or email? Social media? Referrals? You can attribute all sources using deep linking.Deep Linking Best Practice

Since deep linking directs users to specific content, it puts users on a different path than the ideal user flow. This means that you need to carefully plan how they will be used and how they will present information to the user.Conclusion:

So far we have seen how mobile app deep links can give you various business benefits in terms of generating high revenue and enhancing sales.

Hence, mobile app deep links have become an essential component of mobile products. The potential to improve the user experience, increase downloads and retention, improve the visibility of the application, and even generate revenue make the mobile app deep links valuable both from the point of view of the developer as well as the user.

Now, you can hire expert mobile app developers at affordable pricing from a reliable mobile app development company like ValueCoders. ValueCoders is a leading web and mobile app development company offering mobile app development solutions in iOS, Android for years.

Key Benefits to Using Mobile App Deep Links vs. Traditional Links was originally published in Hacker Noon on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.