iOS. I have a mobile web site and a mobile app for the same. i want the user to be able to navigate from web to my app through a link. Is it possible for this feature to be feasible when the app is not installed. I know i can use smart app banners when the app is already installed and this feature can be implemented then. But the main problem i am facing is when the user is asked to install the app (from smart app banners) for a particular page of my website. How can i automatically redirect the user to same page on my app from where he clicked the app banner on first launch of app ?
This is a problem that Branch, the company I'm working for, solves. It's actually fairly simple to explain, but quite a bit more tricky to implement yourself.
Apple doesn't currently allow you to persist information like that through an install (through the App Store), so you'll need an intermediate server. Now, depending on what devices you want to support, this gets more and more tricky. You mentioned you're only on iOS now, but if you expand to Android, this becomes even more complicated (with the fragmentation of Android devices and browsers, etc). For now, I'll just explain for iOS though. It's basically a two step process, starting with the smart banner on your mobile web page.
The smart banner, when clicked, will try to
* Launch the app if possible. We do this by trying to load via the app's URI scheme.
* If the URI Scheme fails (not installed), we send a device fingerprint to our servers based on IP, model, etc. and then send the user to the app store.
The second part is then within the app:
* When it launches, it needs to ask the server if it was launched via a link click. (whether directly into the app or through the app store and now into the app).
* It sends along a similar fingerprint, and then the server (if the device matches) will send back the relevant info (the page id, or whatever you use).
* If the page id is present, you need to present the view controller with that content to the user (you may need to persist this info in your app through a login, if it's behind an auth wall).