URLgenius Helps You Deep Link from Your Ionic App into Other Apps

When it comes to app deep linking, many people often think about technologies that developers are often tasked with evaluating like Apple Universal Links, Firebase, various standalone SDKs etc. But what about cases where you need to link into 3rd party apps that you have no control over? For example, linking into social apps like Facebook or Instagram, or into m-commerce apps like Amazon.

Seed to Spoon, an Ionic customer, discovered URLgenius was a great fit for their needs and we wanted share with you their use case. If you're also an Iconic customer, what we think you will love about URLgenius is is that there is no development or SDK required. You can create links to just about any app you can think of – including your own.

The Challenge and the Solution

Dale and Carrie and their family turned their backyard into a food farm in 2015 and were so successful they decided to create a mobile app that teaches other families how to do the same. They had already launched their Ionic app, and on one of the screens were linking to Amazon to encourage people to shop to help support their efforts through affiliate commissions. The challenge was that the link in the Seed to Spoon app could not open the Amazon app. Instead the visitor was sent to the Amazon mobile website to login. This resulted was lost engagement and ultimately lost affiliate revenue.

Dale knew the ideal experience would be to deep link shoppers directly into the Amazon app. He was able to see the Amazon iOS and Android apps had product-level URL scheme meta data required to open the Amazon app from a browser. The catch was those Amazon app URL schemes could not be used like a regular web link, unless they could account for cases where the visitor doesn't have the Amazon app installed. That’s where URLgenius came in handy.

Dale discovered that by entering regular Amazon web URLs into URLgenius, the app addresses for iOS and Android app were generated automatically, including all the affiliate parameters. In addition, URLgenius was able to embed these addresses into links that opened the iOS and Android Amazon app for shoppers who have it installed. And for shoppers who didn’t have the Amazon app, or were using a desktop device, the links would gracefully fall back to the Amazon web URL in their browser.

Other Use Cases and Solutions

As a cloud-based platform, one of the most interesting things about URLgenius is that it doesn’t require an SDK. You can request support for any app, including your Ionic app. The platform supports linking into billions of app screens across thousands of apps. This opens limitless cross-linking opportunities between your app and other apps – and can help drive organic discovery and engagement in your app.

Here are some use cases to get you thinking:

• Link into social pages in Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube apps to grow followers
• Link into Messenger, Telegram, WhatsApp and SMS to enable customer chat
• Link into app-only AR experiences using Snapchat Lenses and Instagram Filters to increase brand engagement
• Link into product pages in Amazon, Walmart and other commerce apps to drive sales
• Link users into your Ionic app from marketing channels, QR codes, and social apps

This list could get long very quickly but you get the idea. Check out the URLgenius blog for app deep link case studies. You can setup links and test them immediately at no charge and you can brand your links using your domain.