52% of customers are less likely to engage with a company because of a bad mobile experience. It’s essential to provide flawless user experiences that acquire, engage and retain mobile users — which means bringing users from other channels like the mobile web, where fragmented experiences are abundant, seamlessly into your mobile app. Why? Because apps are faster than websites. This is due to apps usually storing their data locally on mobile devices, in contrast to websites that generally use web servers. For this reason, data retrieval happens swiftly in mobile apps. Apps also offer personalization by allowing users to define their preferences; for example, saving their favorite items in a food app. Marketing campaigns and promotions can also be customized depending on the user, and the design of an app is optimized to be a better user experience than a mobile website.
The web isn’t all bad though. In fact, it can be one of your most cost-effective acquisition channels. Considering that the cost to capture a user on the web is 82% less than acquiring a user through a paid app install campaign, driving users from the web to your app is a no-brainer. You likely already have website traffic — why not leverage that traffic to build a base of loyal app users? Bringing users to your app can also increase conversions, as 66% of mobile transactions occur in-app.
Let’s take a look at 5 examples of frictionless cross-platform experiences to inspire and inform your web-to-app strategy*:
5 Examples of Seamless Cross-Platform Experiences
1. TikTok, Text Me the App
The growing social media platform makes it easy for users to navigate from desktop to the app. Users are presented with a “get the app” link on desktop, where they then enter their phone number so the app can be texted to them. From the texted link, users are then brought to the app store to download.
Why it works: users navigating your website are engaged and more likely to convert to app users, and by leveraging deferred deep linking, you can personalize their experience by routing them to the same content within the app that triggered their interest on web — even through install. Branch’s Text Me The App solution makes it easy to prompt users to download the app from any deep link on your website.
TikTok’s Text Me The App experience.
2. Postmates, Email to App
More than 70% of people read their email on mobile, so it’s imperative your email campaigns are mobile-friendly, but this also presents an opportunity to drive users to your app. By deep linking emails, you can ensure users are taken to the right place when they click an email link on mobile. Postmates does a great job with this — in the example below, you can see a user that clicked an email promotion is routed straight to the same promotion within the app. With Branch’s Universal Email, you can easily build email campaigns that work everywhere, maximize down-funnel conversion rates by giving users a better experience in your app, and gain full visibility into email performance by connecting these touchpoints.
Postmates’ email-to-app experience.
3. Reddit, mWeb-to-App Smart Banners
As mentioned, bridging the web-to-app gap is key to delivering a seamless experience and provides a cost-effective channel for app user acquisition. Consider the below example from Reddit: when navigating to Reddit’s website on mobile, the user is presented with a half-page interstitial that encourages them to open the app. Since the user already has the app installed, clicking the “open” button brings them straight to the app. For a user without the app installed, the context of the user’s click would be preserved through install so they would still be routed to the correct content within the app.
Reddit’s mWeb-to-app experience.
Branch’s Journeys solution offers a variety of customizable banners to bring users to the right place in your app, powered by deferred deep linking.
4. Depop, Routing Users to the App from Social
Through deferred deep linking, you can route users directly into your app even through the walled gardens of major social network platforms. Here’s an example from Depop:
Here, the user clicks a link from Depop on Twitter, is routed through the app store, then brought to the exact product in-app that was featured on Twitter. This smooth experience increases the likelihood that this user will complete a purchase whereas if they had been routed to mobile web or even the app’s home screen, they’re unlikely to convert.
5. Airbnb, Content Sharing
In-app content sharing is a great way to leverage existing users to grow your app’s user base. With deep linked content sharing, the end user is taken to the right place in the app every time. Even better? With the Branch dashboard, you can see what app content drives the most installs, so you never have to guess what content is most compelling to your target users.
In the example below, one user finds a great listing on Airbnb for a cottage in Santa Fe. He texts the listing to his friend via the in-app sharing feature, which auto-generates a deep link. When the receiving user clicks the link, she is routed to the same listing within the app. When deferred deep links are built into your app, this experience remains seamless even when the receiving user doesn’t already have the app installed (like below).
The Airbnb content sharing experience via SMS.
Driving users seamlessly to your app from all marketing channels is paramount to mobile growth success. When creating better user experiences, make sure you have a reliable partner to guide you along the way and accurately attribute installs and conversions across devices and platforms. Contact our sales team to learn why the world’s leading digital brands trust Branch, or sign up to start deep linking today.
*Disclaimer:
All screen images are used for illustrative purposes only and do not imply an endorsement of the featured brands or a specific affiliation with Branch. For additional information on how Branch helps leading digital brands deliver breakthrough results, contact the Branch sales team.