A short guide to deep linking

It is rarely the thing that gets a project approved, and often the thing that decides how it goes. Everything we would tell a client about deep linking in the time it takes to drink a coffee.

You do not control the device, the network, or the operating system version, and the design has to accept that. It rarely shows up as a line item, which is exactly why it slips.

Why this earns attention

Every shareable screen should have a URL. Where this goes wrong is almost never a lack of knowledge. It is worth deciding this deliberately rather than inheriting whatever the last person set up.

The practical version

Broken links from email and ads waste real spend. That sounds obvious written down. It is still the thing most often skipped. If it only works because one person remembers to do something, it does not work yet.

The mistakes we see most

Test the case where the app is not installed. The cost of getting this wrong is rarely visible on the day it happens. If it only works because one person remembers to do something, it does not work yet.

What this looks like day to day

Mobile releases are slower to correct than web ones, so the cost of shipping a mistake is higher. Three things worth confirming about deep linking before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• Broken links from email and ads waste real spend — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

If any of that sounds like a description of your current setup, it is fixable.