A deep link is a link that routes a user to a specific spot, whether on a website or on an app.
A mobile deep link is a link containing all the information needed to take a user directly to a specific location within an app, rather than just landing on the homepage when the app is opened.
Mobile deep links are useful because that you can send your users directly to the page on your app that you want them to land on, rather than having to search through the app to find it.
For example, if you created an app and post an ad on social media to promote it: You want them to land directly on the product the user is interested in so that you can make the sale.
Standard Deep Linking
Mobile deep links, in the standard way of thinking about links, only works if the user already has the app. If you want a user to get to a place inside an app, they have to own the app. For this basic mode of deep linking, if the user does not have the app, the page you have directed them to will show up on a web browser.
However, your pages are optimized and streamlined for mobile, so you don’t want to send them outside of your app if you can help it.
Deferred Deep Linking
If you have a link that is supposed to redirect a user to a page on an app, but they don’t have the app, what is the best way to get them where they want to go?
They should just get the app.
Deferred deep linking makes use of a download page as a gate: users download the app, and then they’re led to exactly where they wanted to be in the first place.