Understanding Links In Mobile Applications

Link, describes connection between different entities for its data transmission and communication. To dig in more into the path of Links, let’s delve into Deeplink. Imagine a regular link that takes you to the home screen of an application. A deep link, on the other hand, is like a magical key that whisks you straight to a specific screen inside an application, to exactly where the user is supposed to be. This makes things much faster and convenient for users.

What is Deeplink?

In general terms, a link that drives users to the desired content surpassing the Home Screen/Main screen of the particular application is said to be a deeplink.

Considering different scenarios of links and its working, they are categorized into following names:

• Default Deplink,
• Deferred Deeplink
• Contextual Deplink.

For instance, if a link when clicked by the user navigates them to the application’s specific content, then it is termed as ‘Default Deeplink’. This link works only if the application is installed. The other link when clicked by the user and if the application is not installed, it navigates the user to Google Play Store/App Store and after the installation is completed, navigates them to the desired content is termed as ‘Deferred Deeplink’. Whereas in a link additional parameters are attached to drive deeper insights based on how the user acts with the link is basically termed as ‘Contextual Deplink’.

Understanding parameters for  Deeplink

• One of the important parameters to send along with Deeplinks are UTMs. UTMs show the importance of measurement and help to figure out how the user's acquisition is flowing in. Which sources are driving traffic to your platform. It also determines which channels are performing best for your campaigns.
• UTMs comprises many components such as Source, Medium, Campaign, Term, Content, which are also  supported by analytics platforms like Google Analytics, Firebase, Appsflyer, Branch and many more.

• utm_source = Identifies the original source where the user originated from or where the user acquired from like Google, Facebook, Newsletter and many more
• utm_medium =Describes the type of traffic and identifies how users got to your content such as email, paid ads, social media and so on
• utm_campaign = Traces specific promotional or strategic campaigns which are running to differentiate deeplinks, which groups all related links under one label.
• utm_content = Identifies content name that falls under the same campaign, which derives results of which content of the campaign performed better. For instance, Campaign name is ‘Quarterly Service’  where the content version can be either ‘premium_service’ or ’standard_services’.
• utm_term = Tracks certain keywords that are associated with your campaign or paid ads.

• Let’s get an outline of how we can make a link more purposeful with an example of Deeplink with UTMs. Consider the event where a user has an online store of handmade ceramic items and would like to promote his artifacts/products by running an online campaign on FaceBook. He will then consider building a URL via URL-Builder which is  http://www.hostname.com?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=july_promotions

&utm_content=kitchen_essentials&utm_term=ceramic_items 

• Here, the name ‘july_promotions’ depicts the campaign name, the social post content includes ‘kitchen_essentials’ while the relevant search keyword would include ‘ceramic_items’
• UTM tracking also includes the concept of Channel Grouping in Analytics. For instance, if the utm_medium consists of social media, it includes all the traffic of users via social media whether the user was acquired from Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or any other social platform. This will assist us in analyzing and identifying which marketing channel is most effective for a business.

Normal link vs,. Deeplink in mobile apps

Let’s take and understand this better with example:

- Normal link: It redirects to website directly, for eg. Here is how Amazon link will look like https://www.amazon.in/ 

- Deeplink with UTMs: It checks whether mobile device has app installed or not. If installed it asks to open in app or website in the  browser. Here is the example link - https://amzn.in/d/9qE3teI?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=summer_sale

&utm_content=promo_image&utm_term=best_seller_books 

This link navigates a user to the desired page of the site. The above image depicts the navigation of the user from the link to directly landing on a specific application’s screen.

Benefits of Deeplink

Looking on the brighter side of the usage of deeplink:

• Helps marketers to run app campaigns and understand the performance, user behavior to the app and accordingly optimize the same.
• It can seamlessly navigate users to the intended content of the application without any middle screen interrupting to follow a specific sequence of navigation.
• This ignites user engagements leading to more exploration of the application which ultimately encourages users to have more conversions and engagement.
• Deeplinks promote quick access to the applications content which leads to better retention of the user.

Flaws to be avoided while integrating DeepLink

As we have been introduced to how deeplink can alter the way of application engagement, we must also take note of certain points to be considered while integrating a DeepLink with mobile applications.

• Considering the fact that the DeepLink integration includes Hostname, Path, Pattern, Prefix and many more such attributes
• We must make certain that the sequence and letter case is maintained accurately.

Here’s a sample link https://analyticsliv.com/blogs which will navigate the user through the application (if app is available) if the deplink is integrated or will land the user to the link’s site via browser.

The below code depicts a snippet code for integrating Deeplink into Mobile Application. The tag <intent-filter> includes the details that hold the metadata about the supported link in the application. Where Scheme includes the protocol which is specified without the colon (:) sign, Host indicates the domain name and the pathPattern holds the information of subdomain or specific path to the site. Asterisk (*) sign can also be used as pathPatterns to allow any subdomain or specific links that includes the domain.

To make sure that the deeplink allows users to navigate into your application’s specific content, it is recommended to examine that the deeplink snippet is precisely integrated. Furthermore, the <intent-filter> tag is included in the specific activity upon which you want your users to land on. For instance, you can include the <intent-filter> into the Blogs screen of your application so when a user clicks on the link containing blogs metadata, they will be navigated into the Blogs screen of your application.

Conclusion

In context to having a notion on what Deeplink is? What are its few types? and how can they be useful to drive additional user engagement? We can now be able to utilise this trait based on how we want our users to engage with our applications and what type of links would be best suited for app campaigns. In addition to which it is noteworthy that we can use DeepLinks with its UTM parameters to understand the user acquisition and the source which drives users to your application, leading to insights of your course of action for boosting user engagement.