In the fast-paced, competitive landscape of e-commerce, the impact of mobile shopping is undeniable. Retail brands are now witnessing another paradigm shift: mobile apps are becoming indispensable, especially during peak shopping seasons like the holidays. A recent study from Tapcart found that apps result in an average 63% higher conversion rate and 82% higher revenue per session compared to their online stores.
Mobile apps offer retailers a gateway to seamless and personalized shopping experiences. Customers gain instant access to exclusive deals and tailored recommendations, all packaged in a user-friendly interface that amplifies convenience and fosters engagement. According to Branch’s Mobile Growth survey, the benefit of mobile apps also extends beyond the user experience. For every one dollar a non-app user spends, app users spend $3.30 on average — more than three times as much.
As the holiday season unfolds, the case for retail mobile apps becomes even more compelling. Last year, Adobe Analytics reported that mobile shopping hit a record 55% of online sales during Thanksgiving in the United States. Equally as impressive, 51% of online shopping came from mobile devices during Cyber Week — the highest on record. As the momentum continues into 2024, retail brands must get on board with mobile apps to maximize their revenue growth.
How Tapcart helps
Tapcart transforms traditional Shopify storefronts into dynamic mobile apps, providing a platform to grow sales, engagement, and customer loyalty. Its mobile e-commerce app builder empowers store owners to create personalized and compelling mobile experiences, including exclusive promotions and push notifications. By providing shoppers with the convenience and ease of mobile app shopping — like load-free browsing and one-click checkout — Tapcart apps achieve 2.3x higher conversion rates than mobile websites.
The role of mobile app deep linking
Branch deep links serve as navigational shortcuts, directing users straight to designated in-app content or features. When strategically implemented, deep links enable users to effortlessly engage with an app, bypassing any manual navigation and routing dead ends.
Imagine an influencer sharing a specific product recommendation. If the creator includes a deep link, a single tap will take users directly to the promoted product in the app. If users don’t have the app downloaded, they’ll first be directed to the app store, then to the relevant in-app page. This frictionless experience not only enhances user engagement but also significantly boosts the likelihood of conversions.
With the holiday season’s heightened shopping activity, ensuring that users can seamlessly explore and purchase products in-app is non-negotiable. By leveraging Branch deep links with your Tapcart app, you can provide users with a direct path to product pages, exclusive deals, and personalized recommendations.
Grow your Shopify storefront mobile app with Branch and Tapcart
Branch and Tapcart provide e-commerce businesses with the tools to build and grow their mobile apps. By leveraging the integration, app teams can:
- Streamline campaign configuration across marketing channels. Create, manage, and analyze your deep links for every campaign, channel, platform, and use case within the Branch Dashboard. Enterprise link management capabilities help you build and deploy campaigns 52% faster.
- Accurately track campaign performance. Monitor the success of your campaigns with robust analytics, including granular insights into click-through rates, user engagement, and conversation data. This empowers your teams to evaluate the real impact of each campaign element and make smarter decisions about optimization.
- Embrace a data-driven approach to app growth. Consolidated insights give you a deeper understanding of user preferences, campaign performance, and overall app performance. This ensures your decisions are grounded in data, leading to a more effective and targeted growth strategy.
Get started: How to connect Branch and Tapcart
Before you begin the integration process, ensure you have the following:
- Access to a Tapcart account
- Access to your Branch Dashboard
- Branch Key (prod and testing)
- Branch Link domains (plus any other configured domains)
- Apple bundle identifiers for the iOS app
- SHA256 Cert Fingerprints for the Android app
Steps to configure the integration
- Open your Tapcart dashboard
- Navigate to ‘Integrations’ and select ‘Branch‘
- Populate the following:
- Key = Branch Prod Key
- Test Key = Branch Test Store Key
- URLs = All domains you would want to use. This is a comma-separated value. For example, https://link.tapcart.com,https://tapcart-alternate.app.link,https://tapcart.app.link
Steps to deep link
When setting up a Branch link, you will route the user to the defined key/value pair set in the link’s “redirect” data in the following order:
- android_deeplink_path or ios_deeplink_path
- deeplink_path
- canonical_url
Landing natively on the homepage, product listing page (PLP), and product detail page (PDP)
Direct users to various locations within your application using standard Shopify URLs:
- Homepage: site.com/
- Collection Page: site.com/collections/{{collection}}
- Product Page: site.com/products/{{product_handle}}
- Web View: site.com/{{any_custom_path/any_domain}}
Landing natively on all other app pages
Use the Tapcart (TCR) query parameter to route users to specific native locations:
- Account: ?tcr=account
- Cart: ?tcr=cart
- Order: ?tcr=orders
- Multi Tab on Homepage: ?tcr=%2Fhome%3FtabIndex%3D1 (encoded: ?tcr=/home?tabIndex=1)
- Hybrid Pages: ?tcr=hybrid-pages/<route_id>
Example URLs
Here are examples of how URLs with the Tapcart (TCR) query parameter will appear for different native locations:
- Account: https://www.yourwebsite.com/account?tcr=account
- Cart: https://www.yourwebsite.com/cart?tcr=cart
- Order: https://www.yourwebsite.com/?tcr=orders
- Multi Tab on Homepage: https://www.yourwebsite.com/ends-soon?tcr=%2Fhome%3FtabIndex%3D1
- Hybrid Pages: https://www.yourwebsite.com/?tcr=hybrid-pages/<route_id>
Have questions? Don’t hesitate to reach out to your account team for assistance.
Not using Branch or Tapcart yet? Request a demo with our team to learn more.