Ai Editorial: Time for Airlines to take a Deeper Look at Deep Linking

As mobile apps usage continues to grow, ease of access and relevancy become highly important. Deep linking can help in this context, writes Ai’s Ritesh Gupta

What is decisive when we are shopping or seeking information online/ via a mobile app?

Time that is takes to complete an action, not being exposed to irrelevant pages or sections, feeling secured etc. are some of them. Also, when purchasing online, every customer is required to undertake a specific sequence of actions that require time, memory, and effort. These include setting passwords and preferences, entering external information, remembering past choices and making decisions relevant for the conversion.

A big goal in digital business is reducing these gates, making the process as much smooth and simple as possible.

Deep linking help us doing exactly this, says Federica Grazi, performance marketing analyst at hotel mobile booking app HotelQuickly.

Grazi says this tool is in fact able to create bridges between different pages, both within the same app and between different apps. When clicking a link, instead of being directed to the home page, the customer immediately lends on the page relevant to him, without the need of following a complex series of steps. This of course impacts positively on the bottom line of the business: the easier the process, the higher the purchases.

The travel industry offers a big potential to deep linking: imagine yourself lending in Sydney for an event and receiving a push notification from a travel app, inviting you to book a hotel for the same night. Clicking on it, you would be redirected directly on the city specific hotel listing, without needing to specify your selection. Once paid, you might want to book a cab. You wouldn’t need to insert either your location, or the address of the hotel, as they would both be recorded without losing the metadata. Also, you wouldn’t even need to download the app!

Trends to look out for

It’s becoming common practice to enable “view on app” notice when a user is browsing the content on the mobile web, says You Teck Lam, head of performance marketing, HotelQuickly.

He says by implementing deep linking, developers/ marketer can easily offer the option for the user to consume the content in a native app experience. Push notification deep link and email content deep link is also something to look out for.

Deep linking has been around since the first version of Android and a very early version of iOS. But it is pointed out that only handful of native apps went ahead with the technology because it’s so confusing to do so. Teck Lam says this could be down to a lack of documentation, platform integrations and cross-functional adopters to push deep linking.

“Developers are aware of the feature but it’s probably seen as a marketing feature than a product feature. Either the product or marketing team will have to decide upon the schema (deep link) before any integration can be done. Real world usage is also not immediately apparent as there is a lack of standard between the different platforms to enable cross-device deep linking. It creates a scenario where the technology is available but there is clear use case to use it,” he says.


Why it’s important now?

Mobile content is quickly becoming an important aspect of search engine optimization. App discovery is one of the key challenges for most of the apps out there and Google already provide app indexing to allow Google search to crawl through the app content. Enabling a deep link to direct users directly to the content they were searching for will greatly enhance the user experience. This would simply mean that the link quality is high which will result in better SEO.

Also in the context of how to make the most of what Google can do for a mobile app, it should be noted that there are two valuable use cases - the deferred deep link model which direct new users to the intended content after installing the app and retargeting ads which direct users to the content most relevant content based on their interaction with the app. This essentially help build a better customer journey which would increase customer retention and thereby sales.

Also, setting up of deep links is a way to leverage an entity’s social media presence. The likes of Facebook and Twitter allow the use of deep links on their platforms (allow to promote deep views as ads, and this is helpful in retargeting campaigns).

Contextual deep linking

Contextual deep linking can uplift the user experience.

Citing an example, Anthony Collins, lead iOS developer at HotelQuickly shares: As a traveller, if I see an advertisement or receive an email from a company which is focused on a very specific thread e.g. ‘Great hotel deals on the HotelQuickly app today, average 28% discount in Bangkok!’, I have been provided with the important contextual information that not only does HotelQuickly have “great hotel deals...” but, more specifically, that ”...Bangkok!” is being highlighted.

From a deep linking perspective, the aim is to connect the statement to the relevant content in the app.

“I expect to click on the link, be navigated to the app and presented with the heavily discounted hotel deals in Bangkok automatically. A fully seamless journey. A regular deep link lacks the contextual awareness of opening the app in Bangkok and perhaps, would simply open up the app,” says Collins.

As a developer, Collins says the team knows a lot more about the traveller, their habits, their favorite destinations, where they are right now, what time of the day they prefer to book. With this data the team can have an incredibly granular approach in targeted marketing that, based on the data the traveller has shared, is far more user centric than ever before.

“Looking into our data, we see you have used our app recently, you looked for a luxurious hotels in Singapore. You closed the app whilst viewing ‘W’ Singapore. Today you also did the same and looked at exactly the same hotel. We can then provide you with a push notification informing you that we have 1 room left, in the hotel you were looking at two hours ago, at that fantastic price you won’t find anywhere else and might want to return back to the HotelQuickly app. Clicking on the ‘push notification’ we have sent to your mobile device with this information, opens the app and takes you straight to the hotel. We have saved you the disappointment of losing out on that hotel room you clearly have a keen interest in,” explained Collins.

Approach

So how to approach seamless transition from the link to the app?

The first is to ensure the schema is properly integrated into the app and take note of the logic flow for the particular deep link the user is entering to. For example, if a user needs to be in login state before they can access the screen, the developer should ensure that the user is properly transitioned through the user flow.

The second is to use a cross-device link to enable proper transition between devices. Platforms like URX and Appsflyer OneLink already provide that level of transition.

Maturity level

Very few companies are using deep links today on mobile, says Jerome Seidita, mobile commerce director, Nok Airlines. “But I believe it is a top priority for any companies offering their services on different devices types, even more when it comes to retargeting,” he says.  

To answer this problem, the team at Nok Airlines created an efficient tool that allows to understand how users are connecting with the airline and redirect them to the best available channels using deep links.

“If you have the application installed we will open the app with pre-filled fields whereas if you are connecting from your computer we will redirect you to the right page on our desktop website. Other companies started to do that recently like LinkedIn but we are still at the early stages,” says Seidita. “We are also working on one-to-one push notifications, targeting the right person at the right moment with detailed information such as weather or traffic linked to booking information and behaviour. A very exciting and promising area,” he says. 

So clearly the industry should go in this direction. Nobody likes to arrive on a page that is either not related to the advertising or not mobile/ desktop friendly.

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