Since normal Web links don’t reach into a specific spot within a mobile app, several companies have offered “deep linking” solutions. Now, predictive CRM vendor CommandIQ is launching a free deep linker called 1HOP.
“This is a piece of the mobile ecosystem that needed to be built,” CEO/co-founder Noah Jessup told us, especially for those “doing omnichannel marketing.” He added that his company doesn’t intend to make money on the new tool.
For the marketer, the dilemma could start with a simple link inside an email. Jessup noted that the link could be opened on a desktop computer or a phone, and 1HOP is designed so that marketers can focus on that one link.
As an example, the link is, say, a LinkedIn invitation, which you read on your phone. Clicking on a normal link might lead to the top of the onboard LinkedIn app — or to nowhere at all.
But 1HOP can be used by marketers to set up the originating link for either an Android or iOS device. The same link can also be used on a desktop computer to point to a Web site destination.
Jessup pointed out that in most cases the target app belongs to the marketer, so they will know the route structure and can determine the destination link. If they don’t, there are tools to determine that link, which is then entered into 1HOP.
So if you click on a 1HOP-created originating link inside a mobile device, the 1HOP platform checks to see if app installed. If it is and the link inside it has been defined, the user is taken to the desired spot.
If the app is not installed, the 1HOP’d link can lead the user to a download location for that app. Or the user can be sent to the Web version in the device’s browser. A marketer can later change the destination link in 1HOP without changing the original source link.
Marketers need not be a CommandIQ customer to use 1HOP; they only need to create an account. The user doesn’t need any extra apps or integration on their end.
“The end-user will never see 1HOP,” Jessup said. “The product marketing team can set up all this logic without creating any code.”
The deep linking scene is heating up, with various solutions attempting to find an answer to app-space.
Competing deep linking tools include URX, which allows users to set up links within an app, determine deep links in other apps, or search for a specific link within an app, like a song inside Spotify. Quixey also offers an app- and inside-app search engine. There’s also the appropriately named Deeplink.me, whose tool is similar to 1HOP’s but is fee-based.
In April, Facebook launched its AppLinks tool, and Google announced its App Indexing API in June.
