A popular retailer, known for sporting goods and outdoor gear, was trying to increase downloads of its mobile app for iOS and Android in advance of the holiday season. The company was already promoting its mobile apps in the footer of it’s mobile website. This strategy, however, was not driving a significant amount of traffic and a new strategy was needed to quickly increase the visibility and awareness of its mobile apps.
The company considered implementing Apple Smart Banners which are simple meta tags that render a banner at the top of a mobile web page which promotes the iOS app and leads visitors to the app store for iOS or opens the app if it is already installed on the device. The effectiveness of this strategy, however, would be limited because Apple Smart Banners only support the Safari Web browser and are not visible in other browsers such as Google Chrome or embedded browsers in social apps such as Facebook and Twitter. In addition, Android did not have a solution similar to Apple Smart Banners. A third party smart banner solution was needed that could easily support both platforms.
The marketing manager discovered that deep linking was the solution to the problem. Deep linking typically means linking to a webpage beyond the homepage but it also means the ability for a marketing link or a web banner to open a mobile app or send the user to the app store if the app is not installed on the device.
Any third party smart banner solution, however, needed to be easy-to-use, require minimal technical resources and allow for immediate implementation. For maximum reach, the smart banner had to support all browser and device configurations across iOS and Android.
The company was already using URLgenius technology to deep link to its social profiles to help increase followers and mobile engagement. In this case, the marketing team was provided with their URLgenius Smart Banner link as a small snippet of Javascript code that was then pasted into the header of the mobile web page. The banner would only be seen when the page was accessed by a mobile device. Once published, the marketing team simply tested the banner when both with and without the app installed.
When the retailer’s iOS app was installed, the banner opened the app. When it was not installed, the banner sent the iPhone and iPad users to the app entry in the iOS app store. Even when the page was accessed from a link within Facebook or Twitter, the URLgenius Smart Banner was visible and routed traffic across platforms as expected. The same behavior was seen on Android. If the banner was clicked by a Windows device, however, the banner clicked through to the retailer’s mobile landing page.
“This was a wildly successful solution for us and the results exceeded our expectations by increasing app installs by 300%. Not only was the banner visible from all browsers and devices on iOS and Android, it was all done without custom development. We were able to reach our goals without allocating any development resources to the project”
– Marketing Manager, Sports and Outdoor Gear Retailer
URLgenius app banners is the first banner to the meet the needs of all mobile devices and browsers without any custom development. After the first two weeks of the campaign, the retailer reported a 300% increase in app downloads across iOS and Android. The company was easily able to see the breakdown of visitors across platforms.
Saving time and development resources, the URLgenius cloud-based, deep linking platform helps solve complex app vs. web challenges without the need for custom development or the integration of Software Development Kits (SDKs).
Contact us to get the banner code for your app. Test and learn how we can help you increase app downloads and re-engagement for your mobile apps on iOS and Android with minimal technical investment.
