How to get deep linking right
It comes up on almost every project, usually later than it should. The short answer to deep linking is that it is mostly a sequence of small decisions, not one big one.
Mobile releases are slower to correct than web ones, so the cost of shipping a mistake is higher. It is the sort of thing that looks like polish right up until it costs you an enquiry.
The reason this keeps coming up
Every shareable screen should have a URL. Getting it slightly wrong is survivable. Ignoring it entirely is not. The teams that stay on top of it are the ones who put it on a calendar rather than a wish list.
The steps
- Establish what you have today before changing anything
- Broken links from email and ads waste real spend
- Test the case where the app is not installed
- Write down the decision so the next person does not re-litigate it
Test the case where the app is not installed. The cost of getting this wrong is rarely visible on the day it happens. Check it against what you would want a competitor's site to get wrong.
Making it stick
How to tell if yours is fine
You do not control the device, the network, or the operating system version, and the design has to accept that. Three things worth confirming about deep linking before you move on:
- Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
- Every shareable screen should have a URL — and you know whether that is true here
- There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped
None of this needs a rewrite. Most of it is a morning's work once someone decides to do it.