How to Generate Affiliate Links That Open in E-Commerce Apps From a Website

Published on February 24, 2023

Are How to Generate Affiliate Links That Open in E-Commerce Apps From a Website you an affiliate marketer looking for an innovative way to skyrocket your sales commission and overall conversion rates? No matter what e-commerce company you’re partnered up with—Amazon, Target, Walmart, or any other—it can be tricky figuring out what tools and techniques will help you effectively reach your commission goals.

And beyond that, you have to make sure that it’s you and your campaign that get the credit for the referral and sale, right? Correct us if we’re wrong, but that’s possibly the hardest part of tracking the whole thing—i.e., making sure that your audience is clicking on your unique affiliate link and buying the product from there.

With all that being said, there’s a major component of today's publisher business model that many have overlooked with regard to maximizing your sales and commissions: making sure that the links on your website are opening up in the app, and not the browser. How to Generate Affiliate Links That Open in E-Commerce Apps From a Website

Think about it—it’s nearly a sure bet that most of your readers and overall following are mobile users who conduct their Googling and internet reading on their smartphones. It follows then that many of your readers have these e-commerce sites (or at least Amazon) on their phones. When online shopping is weaved into their reading experience where do mobile apps fit? There are certain expectations attached to what happens after clicking on a link to a product or service.

Perhaps the first and foremost expectation? The link—whether to a product or storefront on Amazon or to another e-commerce destination—opens up in the app if the app is installed. Unfortunately, this isn’t the case most of the time. What ends up happening instead is that these customers are prompted to log in to whatever e-commerce site within their internet browser—even when they already have the app installed (which, again, is the case most of the time).

Here’s what usually happens next—shoppers either completely abandon their cart, or they just hop over to the app to manually search for the product and add it to their cart on their own. Of course, not only does this mean a lost sale, but you’ve also lost the connection to your affiliate attribution tags, and ultimately? Your commission!

What’s the solution, then? App-to-app linking, of course! At URLgenius, we’ve taken the headache out of creating affiliate links that open directly to the corresponding app with our deep link generator. Even better? No SDKs or other technical resources required!

Continue reading this post to learn more about why you’re faced with this particular obstacle (what we call the walled garden), how to solve for it, and a step-by-step tutorial on how to generate these affiliate links yourself. Let’s get started!

Why Don't My Amazon Affiliate Links Open the App?

Okay, so we briefly touched on the topic of the dreaded Amazon-login-abandoned-cart complex—but why does this happen? What does solving this problem entail?

Unfortunately, friends, it all boils down to a challenge in the app marketing world—the dreaded walled garden. The walled garden is the instance in which a person clicks on a link within the app they’re using, and instead of being directly taken to the desired app, they’re prompted to log in to their Amazon account (even though they already have the app installed!).

Watch this brief video: How to Generate Instagram Mobile App URLs to Open the Amazon App

Now, this is no fault of Amazon—the walled garden exists in virtually every app out there (such as social apps like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, etc.; and other e-commerce apps such as Target, Walmart, etc.). The walled garden exists to keep users within the “walls” of the app for as long as possible. Annoying, right?

And remember, when a shopper is sent to the login and ceases to proceed with the transaction, the Amazon Attribution tags aren’t passed. In all? Decreased sales, plummeting conversion rates, and lost campaign credit and commission!

Thankfully for you, we at URLgenius have a patented, state-of-the-art app affiliate link generator, where you can create unique mobile app URLs for your website. These affiliate links open in the app, taking your customers from your content to the correct screen in the desired app—significantly decreasing the number of abandoned carts!

Not only that, but (for Amazon affiliates in particular) URLgenius links also pass your attribution tags into the Amazon app. Yes, you read that correctly! We support in-app Amazon Attribution, and even more? We are the only verified Amazon Ads partner with the ability to pass Amazon Attribution tags in-app, without any SDKs.

Once you generate your unique mobile app URL for affiliate marketers, there are just two more things you need to do:

Update the link with the URLgenius link generator
Make sure to include your affiliate attribution tags

Next up, a step-by-step tutorial on how to create these special mobile app URLs for Amazon affiliates—and we promise, it’s easy as pie!

Learn more about how instant app linking increases sales and conversion:

Youtube Video

Step-By-Step: How to Generate Amazon Live App Deep Links to Open the Amazon App from Social Media Posts

Here we are! These are the steps for creating a single affiliate link that opens in the Amazon, Walmart, Target, or other e-commerce app. (If you need to create affiliate deep links for advertising feeds and other solutions, URLgenius offers enterprise customers access to an API.)

Alright, then! All you need to do is follow each step below, and from there update your current campaign’s links!

Pro Tip: You can use your brand's domain for your links. Go to the settings for your account and click 'URL Branding'. You can set that up any time and your brand will be applied to all your links (the URLgenius format also keep working). View the step-by-step video on how to brand your app links.

1. Enter your affiliate URL into the URLgenius home page

Start with your affiliate link, including your affiliate tracking tags. Paste the link into the URLgenius homepage to update the link so it can open the app. You can use your brand's domain for your app deep link, which we recommend.

Notice that you are given the option to customize the end of the URLgenius link to align it with your campaign. This will also help you find the link later in your list of links in the URLgenius dashboard.

Then simply select “Compose,” and you'll be taken to the settings page for your e-commerce app deep link. To go back to get the link later and get to this settings page again, just click 'Console' from the menu for a list of your links, then select the link from the first column.

2. Test your URLgenius affiliate app deep link

From the settings page of your Amazon app deep link, you can copy it to place into your web page. First, however, it's a best practice to test your affiliate deep link, which you can do by scanning the QR code or clicking the button to email it to yourself.

3. If you need a QR code for the same link just click “QR Settings” to download

Need a QR code that opens the e-commerce app of your choosing? You're in luck! Every URLgenius Amazon app deep link also comes with an Amazon QR code. Just click “QR Settings” to download and customize. You can change the color and logo and density (scanning distance) and more. Just make sure to test it in context, because changing the design can affect the ability to scan it depending on how you're using the code.

4. Amazon affiliate app deep link analytics

URLgenius will track app clicks, app-opens, and other information—such as referring URLs and referring apps.

The following chart shows the volume of app-opens by platform and device. The app-open rate tells you what percentage of people who scanned had the e-commerce app installed for iOS and Android.

This chart shows scans by city and separately by language preference. These anonymous insights help you figure out where and how to focus your campaign, both in terms of geography and language.

What If I Have Too Many Links to Create?!

Those of you who have a high volume of links to create might be under the impression that you have to use this manual process to update all of your links? Not so! That would take a long time if you have thousands of links to update, but not to worry.

URLgenius offers a scalable solution called dynamic deep linking which gives you a simple way to append the retailer's link to a special prefix just for you. That link structure turns it into an app deep link that can open the retailer's app from a website.

Start Generating Affiliate App Deep links and Multiply Your Affiliate Commissions

More in-app engagement, sales more $$$— need we say more? It’s time to maximize your social media promotions with URLgenius app deep links.

At URLgenius, we're here to help! Contact us for a demo or with questions at info@urlgeni.us about Amazon app deep links and QR codes.

If you found this post helpful, check out our other popular how-to posts for affiliate app deep linking:

Get Started for Free

No credit card required