Short URLs, deep links and wide reach

Imagine I have a startup called Example that has a web site at www.example.com, an Android app and an iOS app. When people share links to content hosted on our site I’d like mobile users to open the link in our app. That’s assuming they already have the app installed. If they don’t have the app I’d like them to be sent to the website. How do we achieve this?

On Android we can register to handle links on the http://example.com domain but on iOS those links would get intercepted by the browser and I’d have to add a banner to every page asking people to “Open in our app.”

Or I’d need a mechanism that redirects http://example.com URLs to a custom URL scheme such as example://.

The recently updated URL Shortener API from Google takes care of that for you by using the mapping you’ve already provided as part of implementing App Indexing on Android and iOS.

It’s also important to make sure that users who don’t want your app or don’t have it installed still get a good experience. That’s why I’ve provided a few examples so that you can try out the experience and decide for yourself:
- Google+: https://goo.gl/1t5NPj
- Google Maps: https://goo.gl/maps/MtbKS
- Zillow: https://goo.gl/u3Hxu6