TapCommerce Insights

Last month, Twitter announced a new feature for developers called mobile app deep-linking that received less attention than it deserved. This feature allows app developers to enable links directly to their apps from tweets. To use one of Twitter’s examples, say you take a photo in Path and tweet it out. If deep-linking is enabled, a user who sees that photo on the Twitter iPhone app will be able to click right from the tweet into the Path app. If they don’t have the app, they’ll be taken to the iOS App Store.

This might not seem like that big of a deal, but before this feature was introduced by Apple in iOS 6, linking into apps was rudimentary at best. If you wanted to link to an iOS app you had to use the iTunes Store URL. This meant that users were led to the app’s iTunes store page which prompted you to open the app. Using the iTunes URL is fine if someone doesn’t have the app, but it’s far from ideal if they already have the app installed.

Apple decided to do something about this in iOS 6 with the inclusion of custom URLs. Buried in “Advanced App Tricks” is an implementation guide for custom URLs. Custom URLs allow developers to create customized deep links that take users to specific pages within your app. There are many great examples of how to best leverage these types of links:

Fab

Fab has enabled deep-linking in their mobile optimized emails. Any link you click in an email on your iPhone will go directly to the product SKU page within the Fab app.

Fab mobile email promoting the KeepCup

Direct link into the KeepCup page within Fab’s iPhone app from their email

Google Apps

Google recently announced perhaps an even more significant adoption of custom URLs within their mobile apps. Now, whenever you open a link in Gmail, you’ll be taken to that URL in Chrome if you have the app. Same for Youtube or Google Apps. This is clearly both a superior user experience and a way for Google to increase engagement with their apps on Apple’s home turf.

 

Facebook

Facebook has opened many of the actions within their app to deep-linking as well. This is in many ways similar to Twitter’s adoption. If you’re an app developer on Facebook’s platform you can deep-link to specific pages within your app from Facebook’s iOS app.

Deep-linking isn’t just a tool that Facebook, Google or Twitter can use. Much like Fab, we’d recommend that all developers incorporate a custom URL structure into their iOS apps so that they’re able to provide a better user experience and allow linking directly into their app from email, Facebook, Twitter and elsewhere.

At TapCommerce, we work with many companies that are leveraging custom URLs for their mobile marketing programs. If you’d like to learn more about best practices, let us know!

When we look back on the holiday shopping season in 2012, we’ll see that mobile platforms are increasingly becoming a viable way for consumers to shop. There’s already an abundance of data that supports this from Black Friday and Cyber Monday. According to a report from IBM, Cyber Monday saw an increase of 70% in mobile sales. The iPad represented 7% of all online sales and completely dominated competing devices by producing 90.5% of all tablet e-commerce sales. 24% of Black Friday retail traffic came from mobile devices up from 14% in 2011 and less than 1% in 2009. The trend is clear and it’s not reversing. What’s leading to this shift in user behavior?

1. Mass adoption of smartphones and tablets. Apple has sold 100 million iPads in less than three years. There are 1 billion smartphone users globally. The growth rate of smartphone and tablet adoption is far surpassing that of other platforms/devices. This is both across device purchases and usage. In two years, mobile internet use has grown >300% and represents 13% of global traffic. Mobile commerce is merely a subset of this macro trend.
2. Improved mobile shopping experiences. As a result of the above and their own internal data, e-commerce companies have realized that they need mobile optimized websites and dedicated native apps across platforms. Companies like Branding Brand and Revel Touch are rapidly growing to accommodate the demand from traditional e-commerce companies who don’t have mobile design expertise in-house. “E-Commerce 2.0” companies like Fab, Gilt and One Kings Lane are increasingly taking a mobile first approach and thinking about mobile platforms ahead of the web. Fab anticipates that they’ll see 50% of sales from mobile next year. Companies that have built mobile-optimized and/or native app experiences are seeing higher conversion rates and increased adoption of using mobile devices as part of normal buying behavior.
3. The advent of “couch commerce.” This is less quantifiable than the above, but it’s an anecdotal observation that you’ll be hard-pressed to deny. People shop on their desktops/laptops while at work to procrastinate. When they get home, they’re increasingly sitting on the couch, watching TV and on their smartphone or tablet answering emails, playing games and, of course, shopping. You’ve done this. I’ve done this. I think this behavior will continue to increase and #1 and #2 will be gasoline on the fire.

It seems clear that as Apple and the bevy of Android manufacturers continue to churn out high-quality mobile devices, consumers will increasingly discover new things to buy on the go or while relaxing at home using these emerging platforms. The companies that have built best of breed UX on mobile and who are able to acquire and retain customers efficiently will reap the benefits of this behavioral shift.

Stay tuned for things we find interesting in the world of mobile e-commerce.