Summary
After realizing how critical native apps are for building stronger relationships with users, the team at Dailymotion—a video-sharing website on which users can upload, watch, and share videos—set out to leverage the high traffic from their mobile website to drive new app installs. Ultimately, the Branch Journeys web-to-app optimization platform allowed Dailymotion to drive significant app growth (to the tune of a 71% increase in 30-day retention and a 28% increase in active days per first-month users) while routing users to the exact video in the app they were viewing on the mobile website.
Goals
- Drive app growth from the mobile website
- Create seamless user experiences from the mobile web to in-app content
- Improve overall user retention and engagement on mobile
Approach
- Use Branch’s Journeys web-to-app optimization platform to show banners on mobile site
- Use Branch deferred deep linking to route users to in-app video, even following install
- Use Branch to deep link to correct video in-app if app already is installed
Results
- Significant increase in new app installs; largest single channel
- 71% increase in 30-day user retention
- 28% increase in active days per month
The Problem
Users have largely declared that they prefer to use native apps over mobile web to interact with their favorite companies, spending nearly 7x their time in native apps. Dailymotion was looking to convert their short-lived mobile web users into retained, high-engagement app users. Additionally, they found that despite using Apple’s Universal Links on dailymotion.com for deep linking, many existing app users would still end up on their mobile site since Apple’s solution only works in a minority of edge cases.
The Solution
To fix this problem, Dailymotion turned to Branch to power seamless and dependable web-to-app routing through its deep linking infrastructure. They added a [Journeys smart banner](https://branch.io/journeys/), which supports deferred deep linking for new users and can deep link straight into the app when the user already has it. As a result, Dailymotion drove significantly more app downloads and saw a huge increase in the retention and engagement of users who experienced this improved user flow.
Conclusion
App installs are extremely expensive and difficult to come by, which is why it’s essential to leverage every owned and operated platform you have to drive them. Even once you do acquire a new install, users will grow increasingly frustrated if they face additional clicks or searches to access desired content. Branch’s best-in-class deferred deep linking allowed Dailymotion to remove many roadblocks for their users, which led to a 71% increase in 30-day retention in their mobile app and a 28% increase in the number of active days per user in their first month.
Mobile web is the single biggest source of free installs that no one talks about. With Branch’s web-to-app optimization platform, Dailymotion has the option to select and customize different asset types, such as banners, floating buttons, full-page, or half-page interstitials, and personalize the user experience with custom audiences based on device type, location, or number of web visits (whether the user has the app already), and many more. Furthermore, Dailymotion easily A/B tests smart banner copy, design, and styling to optimize downloads without sacrificing the user experience.
Learn more about how you can use Journeys to increase traffic to your mobile app and increase the engagement of existing app users.