Summary
Snapdeal, an online marketplace, empowers its user to search and book great deals on a variety of offerings. Their aim was to become the go-to portal for online shopping. To execute this aim, they needed an innovative strategy to improve conversion rates on popular keywords such as ‘Adidas shoes’ and ‘iphone’ in order to remain competitive with other online shopping portals. To effectuate this, Snapdeal leveraged Branch’s deep linking technology.
Background
With eCommerce consistently on the rise in India, advertising has become difficult and super-competitive. Newer companies, with smaller budgets even, are leveraging advertisements. To compete, Snapdeal has to be more innovative in designing and implementing an advertising strategy.
The Problem
Snapdeal’s vision is to create India’s most reliable and frictionless commerce ecosystem that creates life-changing experiences for buyers and sellers.
In this scenario, geographic and demographic targeting were extremely consequential. Albeit possible with Adwords, the existing system had severe limitations. The ads have to drive the users to the App Store rather than the company’s own landing pages. Adding to the broken experience, users who already had the app installed would be redirected to the App Store rather than the in-app content embedded in the ad. Users without the app would be taken to the App Store to download the app, but then taken to the localized home page specific to their location instead of the relevant page linked to the ad that prompted and incentivized them to download the app in the first place.
Before Branch, users had to take multiple actions to convert. A typical event flow would look something like this – search keywords, click on the ad, download the app, open the app, click on search again, type in the keywords, then load results to view the options. Overall, it would be a six-click plus a manual in-app search procedure which would negatively impact the conversion rates.
The Solution
Branch links route a user to the right content intelligently by detecting whether or not they have the app installed. With Branch links, a user is empowered to directly enter the app and view results once they click on an ad. In the event that they don’t have the app installed, they will be routed to the app store to install Snapdeal and view the intended content (based on their original search) immediately upon opening the app.
Conclusion
Keeping up with its core business value of innovation and creativity, Snapdeal’s strategy to improve the traditional mobile install ad format was hugely successful.
- 40% increase in click-to-install rate
- 29% increase in first-time bookings