Deferred deep linking is one aspect of mobile deep linking. It describes the principle of deep linking into an app that is not yet installed. This implies that clicking (or otherwise invoking) the deep link causes:
Contents
- An app store to open to enable the end-user to install the linked-to app
- Once the app is installed, the link is invoked with its original URL and parameters so that the newly installed app can handle the invocation.
A common use case is to drive installs; linking to functionality in a not-yet-installed app provides the user with an incentive to install it.
Platform-provided support
While there is currently no industry standard for deferred deep linking, various platform providers offer differing levels of support:
Alternatives to Platform-provided support
For the platforms where there is no real support (the majority), the only option is a "roll-your-own" approach. The general approach is to provide a mechanism where the URL and its parameters can be passed "around" the app store; ie. received from the source (linking) application (the "click"), stored, and then passed to the destination (linked-to) application once it's installed and run.
The major technical challenge to solve in this approach is identifying which click caused which install so that the correct URL and parameters can be passed to newly-installed app. Tying clicks to installs is a family of technologies known as Attribution.