Mobile app deep linking is often overlooked by mobile marketers and is undoubtedly an important part in driving conversions and enhancing the user experience. Deep links can help to heighten the awareness of your app and keep users engaged in your content, ultimately increasing revenue for your brand.

Deep Linking Explained

Deep linking, simply put, is the process of using a uniform resource identifier (URI) to direct users to a specific page of content within your app. For example, if you’re a fashion e-commerce brand that sells clothes and are having a sale on dresses, you can send an email or push notification to app users that contains a deep link which will send them to the relevant destination page of the sale within the app. If you were to simply link to your app instead (without deep linking), users would be directed to the homepage and forced to search for sale items on their own.

There are two basic types of deep linking: traditional deep links and deferred deep links. Traditional deep links only direct users to content if they’ve got your app installed on their mobile device, while deferred deep links are more complex. A deferred deep link directs users who don’t have your app installed to your app’s page at the App Store or the Google Play Store. Once they’ve downloaded, installed and opened your app, they’ll be immediately directed to the content they were originally linked to.

Why is Deep Linking Important?

In today’s world, the mobile app experience is one of the most important parts of marketing your business. In fact, in 2018, more than 50 percent of all internet traffic was determined to be from a mobile device, and that number is expected to continue rising in the coming years. That’s why creating a positive user experience that promotes high engagement and user retention rates is so important, and deep linking is an enormous part of that.

For many businesses, the most important benefit of deep linking is its potential to drive revenue. As mentioned previously, deep links can provide users with immediate access to sales, new products or content on your app, but what may be even more important is the ability to provide new users with deep links that can be accessed in Google searches or from other apps. Using mobile app deep linking, you can also more easily track the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns and find out which ads are garnering the most clicks and exactly where they’re coming from.

Deep linking has been proven to increase user engagement and onboarding, as well. By incorporating deep links into your Android and iOS apps, you can better direct your users throughout the app and heighten the user experience drastically. Users that don’t have to spend time searching for content are more likely to keep coming back to your app. In addition to increasing user retention, deep linking has been proven to double activation rates and increase usage time.

How to Incorporate Deep Links in Your Mobile App

While there are several ways to use deep linking, one of the most effective is through push notifications that direct current users to new content or current sales. Other highly effective deep link uses include:

–  Deep links to product recommendations from within your app
–  App-to-app referrals, such as links that direct users to your app from a social network
–  Using Google ads to link to your app
–  Asking your users to send referrals to their friends through your app

As mobile apps become the standard for all businesses, the list of ways we can market via deep links is continuing to grow. Building a solid foundation of deep links within your app is an important part of creating a positive user experience for your customers, as well as a reliable way to draw new users to your app and increase conversions.