Looking to integrate the branch.io in such a way that the admin gets the deep link at web end where he adds the content. And then he manually post the link to some social media say Twitter,Facebook etc. then user clicks on that link and it will take the user to app or app store.
Is it possible, please guide how to handle this. I am quite confused about branch.io. As far i understood branch.io creates the link send via sms and user clicks and gets redirected to app or app store. Is my requirement valid? How to achieve this please guide. Already spent more than a half day on it.
(Full disclosure: I am on the Branch.io team)
This is actually a very common Branch use case, so it's fairly straight forward to implement.
1. Sign up for Branch
Easy step!
2. Integrate the SDK into your app
This is a fairly simple process that should take less than half an hour, and the latest step-by-step docs for doing this are always at the link above. I won't include the full instructions in this answer because Apple creates new roadblocks fairly regularly, and we often have to make small tweaks to the guide.
After you complete this step, any time a user opens a Branch link associated with your app, either your app will launch (if installed) or that user will be sent to the App Store page to download it.
3. Create your marketing link
The link above takes you to the Branch dashboard. From that page, you can create a new Marketing Link, and use the Deep Link Data section to specify a key/value pair. For example, you can set a key of content and assign it the value mycustomvalue:
When your app launches after a user opens this link, the content : mycustomvalue pair will be magically returned to you.
4. Configure Deep Link Routing and Universal Links.
These methods are what actually call back to the Branch API every time your app opens, returning the content : mycustomvalue pair that you encoded in the link. You can do whatever you like with these values, but here are two common approaches:
Route the user to the content that you specify corresponds to mycustomvalue.
Use the values directly to display something customized (for example, if you encoded content : You've been sent a special invitation!
5. Share the link wherever you like!
The link you created can be put anywhere. Email, Twitter, Facebook, paid Google Ads, etc.
Related
I want to implement deferred deep linking in my iOS app as a means of tracking referrals. When a user of my app wants to refer a friend, I'll generate a URL that has a unique referral code. When the other person receives the link and opens it, I want it to take them to my app's page in the App Store. Then if they install my app, when it first opens, I need a way for it to read the referral code from the original URL.
I've found may pages about deferred deep linking on the web but none that really explain how to do it. Instead, these pages all end up telling you to install some third-party code or use some commercial service. This isn't what I'm after. I want to learn how to do this myself.
There are lots of old pages out there that recommend convoluted and error-prone solutions, like tracking the user's IP address, putting the referral code into the clipboard, or somehow obtaining it from a cookie in a web view. I don't think these are the correct solutions to be using in 2022.
If anyone can recommend the appropriate resource, I'd appreciate it.
If it is the case that Apple simply doesn't want us to do this and doesn't provide any support for it, then I'd like to know that too. I was under the impression that they did, but maybe I'm wrong.
Thanks,
Frank
Apple's Universal Links allow for this (would understand the difference between the typical URL Scheme and Universal Links as threshold). This assumes you're willing to do some lifting server-side along with other hurdles on the iOS side, largely administrative.
A benefit of Universal Links and the server-side work is that you're provided a fallback webpage if a user does not have the app installed. Since the app should open if downloaded, you could typically just redirect to the app store from this URL. In this case, though, before any redirects, you could execute an operation to decode the unique params passed in the URL and persist it in a remote data store. The data encoded needs to be required and verifiably unique during your registration -- email seems ideal.
If that's feasible, your standard registration flow could require email verification with a link to the app as a mandatory entry point (think slack magic link). When the user submits his/her email to verify, you could first check that email against your data store to see if it maps to any previously decoded referrals saved from the flow above. If so, you could generate a unique link for this email to your app with params that will direct the deferred/deep link.
The good news is, I found a solution. I could construct a web page that redirects the user to the app store, but before doing so, copies some text into their clipboard (without telling them or asking them to do anything). Then later if they install my app I can get the text by pasting from the clipboard. I tested this idea and it works.
The bad news is, starting with iOS 16, Apple now asks you for permission to paste. So if you try to do this, your user will launch your app and immediately get promoted with a message asking them to allow a paste from Safari. I expect most users will deny the request and just the fact that they saw it will erode their trust in the app (I know I wouldn't trust an app that tried consume my clipboard without a direct command from me).
I'm in the process of updating my iOS app, and one feature that I'd love to add would be the ability to create links (to send via email, or for social media) that would allow users who have downloaded the app to be taken to a certain section of the app, and users who haven't to be taken to the app store page for my app. I also want it to take desktop users to the itunes page for my app.
Now, I've been looking into url schemes as I think this is the way forward, and have managed to create a custom url scheme that will indeed take users to different parts of my app. However, I'm struggling to find a way to check if the app has been installed, and what device the user is on etc.
Would I need to use a server to redirect them to the correct place?
Thanks!
I found out the best way to do it is with universal links, introduced in iOS 9.
https://blog.branch.io/how-to-setup-universal-links-to-deep-link-on-apple-ios-9/
I'm trying to implement Firebase Dynamic Links in an iOS app. The goal is to have a clean URL for marketing purposes so folks can share links on social media. The idea is folks will share the clean URL that starts with my domain name.
When the app is installed following a click on that link, we want to be able to track who referred the app install by looking at the payload delivered by Firebase. I think this goal is similar to Firebase's use case to convert web users to mobile app users.
An example link I would like to provide for sharing on social media is: http://example.com/my-payload-here
I've tried several cases but I'm not able to get the behavior I'm looking for in any case. Has anyone implemented this successfully before?
Here is my test procedure:
Uninstall the app
Send the link to be tested in an iMessage to myself
Tap the link on my iOS device (not using a simulator)
Install the app from the App Store
Launch the app after download completes by tapping "Open" button in the App Store
Below are my findings:
Short link generated from the Firebase Console (https://xyz.app.goo.gl/ABCD) - Link opens in App Store. I install the app. When I launch the app after installing, the payload is not delivered. If I quit out of the app, go back to the link in iMessage, and launch a second time, the payload is delivered.
Long link identical to the "Long Dynamic Link" from the Firebase console for the link generated in #1 (https://xyz.app.goo.gl/?link=http://example.com/my-payload-here&isi=12345&ibi=com.example.MyApp) - behavior is identical to #1
Short link using my domain (http://example.com/redirect/my-payload-here, configured to 301 redirect to URL in #2) - Opens in App Store. I install. When I launch the app after installing, the payload is not delivered. If I quit out of the app, go back to the link in iMessage, and launch a second time, the link still goes to the App Store.
Some questions I have:
Why isn't the payload delivered on the first launch for cases 1 and 2?
How can we make this launch the app and deliver the payload instead of going to the App Store?
I've also consulted the Firebase flowchart for the deep link in case 2.
Google Firebase team added support for custom subdomains to Dynamic Links.
You can now specify up to five custom page.link subdomains for your Dynamic Links. Short links using these new custom subdomains look like the following example: https://example.page.link/abcXYZ
Firebase Dynamic Link domains assigned on projects couldn't be deleted at this time.( firebase team is working on it.)
You can now whitelist the URL patterns that can be used as a Dynamic Link's deep link (link) or fallback link (ifl, ipfl, afl, ofl). If you define a whitelist, Dynamic Links won't redirect to URLs that don't match a whitelisted pattern.
You can try both of these features in the Firebase console.
This is not currently possible with Firebase. If you need whitelabeled URLs, you either need to build it yourself or use a more powerful link platform like Branch.io (full disclosure: I'm on the Branch team).
To answer your questions specifically:
I have implemented Firebase Dynamic Links in a testbed app and can confirm that linking through installation the first time does work for both long and short URL variants. There is likely something wrong with your AppDelegate config, so we can take a look at that if you want to share code.
Firebase does not support custom domains at this time. In theory (if you can solve the first issue above) you could get this working for first install by using a redirect like you have tried. However, you'll never be able to get it to launch the app with Firebase link data once the app is installed. This is because Universal Links work based on the domain of the link, and don't even request the web destination. Even if you enable Universal Links manually on your own domain, the app will open immediately without ever calling Firebase and the link data will never be set.
We're trying to implement deferred deep linking in one of our iOS applications to encourage users to invite their friends to use the app, and reward users based on how many installs occur from their referral link. Basically similar to TapStream's product.
Consider this example:
So, UserA shares their link, “ourappURL.com/refer?id=userA”, on any
network they want. UserB clicks that link, which will take them to
Safari and then bounce them to the App Store page where UserB
downloads the app.
When UserB opens the app, the app checks which referral ID they came
in on (if any). In this example, the referral ID would be “userA” as
that’s the ID that was in the referral link. The app then sends this to
our servers and we award UserA with a referral credit.
I'm trying to break this issue down into its core parts. I believe the first part is getting the web page for the user's referral link to save the referral ID to the device somewhere that the app can access it. But I'm not sure this is possible because of the sandboxed nature of iOS.
I know this is fundamentally possible because many ad providers offer the ability to track installations from an ad campaign (see Mobile App Tracking for example).
We have also attempted to do this ourselves and I will try to break down the different steps here.
Going back to your example, you are correct about "remembering" the device identification, and all relevant data "id=userA". You are also correct about "sandboxed nature of iOS" which I presume it means a web page is not allowed to store information outside of the browser app (Safari) and apps (your app) are not able to access information stored by other apps (Safari).
Our solution to this is to store this device to data key-value pair in an environment that is both accessible by the browser as well as by your app, i.e. your backend server.
The next challenge, which remains to be the biggest challenge, is how to uniquely identify this device from the information collectable from the browser? Javascripts in browsers, unlike native apps, don't have access to IDFAs which could be used to uniquely identify a iOS device. To overcome this, one can imagine to use a combination of common information that is available both to the browser app as well to your native app, i.e. OS type, public IP, screen size, etc. etc. Please note, a composite key from these data fields does not guarantee uniqueness (imagine two iPhone 6 visiting this web page via the same router). Therefore, your backend server (assuming you are using it to store this key-value pair), will want to have a strategy on how to handle collisions on keys i.e. the second key deletes the first key, or you allow collision to exist by having a queue of values for a single key. This really depends on how you actual plan to use this technology.
The last step is to form this composite key on your app using the exact same fields you used earlier in the browser to perform a "lookup" on your backend server to retrieve the value previously stored.
Here is a summary of the steps:
User 1 invites User 2 by sending the following link to 2: example.com?inviter=1
User 2 visit Web Page P
P constructs and sends the following key-value pair to your server S iOS|55.55.55.55|750×1334 -> inviter_id=1
User 2 goes to the app store and downloads your App A
User 2 first launches A, A contacts S with the same key (assuming the IP hasn't changed).
S finds the value inviter_id=1 by using this key passed in and, let's say, reward User 1 five points for inviting 2.
Hope this help!
Edit 04/24:
Since Derrick mentioned it in the comments, I figure I would take this chance to finish our story here.
Going back to the beginning of my answer where I mentioned we've attempted to do this ourselves. We had a working prototype based on our current system architecture (which is not in anyway optimized, or meant to be optimized, for storing and analyzing deep link data like this), we ultimately decided not to allocate any additional engineering resource into this project.
Due to the heuristic nature of this matching process, we found this project needing debugging, tuning and optimizing constantly for a diminishing ROI. More importantly, we have found other companies which are more specialized and do a much better job than ourselves.
It has been probably 6 months since we stopped using our internal system and we haven't regretted making such decision.
During this processes, we've worked with a number of vendors, Appsflyer, Adjust, TapStream and we have ultimately ended up with Branch Metrics https://branch.io.
Whether you should DIY or work with another company again depends on your specific objective. We finally decided to stay with Branch, not only because the other vendors charged anywhere from $500 to thousands of dollars per month while Branch is completely free, but also the level of the support they have provided is simply unparalleled.
We've successfully used the clipboard (NSPasteboard) to achieve this: the web page that processes the redirect to the app store does a paste to the mobile device's clipboard before letting the user download the app. Once the app is installed, it uses NSPasteboard on first launch to check for an appropriately coded string. This string can contain the text of interest or, more securely, a token used to fetch interesting data from the backend. In Objective C:
UIPasteboard *pasteboard = [UIPasteboard generalPasteboard];
NSString *pasteboardString = pasteboard.string;
The clipboard can be cleared once the app is done with it, to avoid repeating the same action.
There is a good solution here: http://blogs.innovationm.com/deferred-deep-linking-in-ios-with-universal-link/
Basic workflow:
User selects domain link on web.
Link sets referral ID to cookie.
User redirected to app store.
On app launch, load referral page in SFSafariViewController.
Referral page checks for cookie and if it exists calls a deeplink into the app with the referral ID.
My answer from HERE
Apple no longer supports Deep Links. It is now called Universal Links and works a bit differently.
Source
Now that Apple no longer supports URI schemes for deep linking, developers must implement Universal Links in order to deep link properly on iOS. If you are already using URI schemes, check out our blog on transitioning to Universal Links.
From: HERE
And HERE is another article on Universal Links and what they are.
I use the Facebook API for iOS, which enables posting content to the Facebook wall. The API allows custom links to be added next to "Like" and "Comment". I would like to add "Get App" here which links to my app on App Store, but how do I do this when my App ID will not be known to be before the app is actually approved? ("Chicken-and-egg" situation)
Possible solutions:
A) Link to a temporary URL which is changed to the App Store link after approval
B) Wait until version 1.1 to add this, when the App ID is known
Is there any other way to accomplish this?
You get an App ID once you create an app in iTunes Connect. That means you get the ID before you publish the app and it doesn't change when the app goes trough review or publishing process. I'm not able to make a screenshot right now, but it's easily found in top left corner when you click on manage apps > your app.
Some ISPs and independent providers offer domain name services that would help here, possibly.
I use EasyDNS, but there are other options.
The idea is that you register a domain name with them and purchase a plan that includes web forwarding. Web forwarding lets you send any web traffic for your domain to a specific URL.
You temporarily forward to any URL you like (presumably a page on your regular site, maybe a "Coming soon" page). Then, when you receive the real URL, change the forwarding to point there.
It might take a day or so for the change to percolate across the while interweb, but generally you can see and test results fairly quickly yourself, or at least that's been my experience.