Web-to-app

How it works

The web page holds a link or a banner that points into the app. A person with the app taps it and the app opens, ideally on the matching screen. A person without the app is sent to the store, installs, and then opens the app. In both cases the page is the starting point and the app is where the value happens.

The term is used for three related things: the journey itself, the campaigns built around it, and the banners and links that make the jump possible. When a plan page lists "web-to-app", check which of these it means.

When it matters

It matters whenever your traffic meets a browser before it meets your app. Landing pages for ads, links in email, creator profile links, search results and QR codes all start on the web. Teams choose this route on purpose too, for the reasons in why teams run web campaigns to grow an app.

How it relates to attribution

The store breaks the trail between the page and the app, so the install would otherwise count as an organic install. Web-to-app attribution repairs the trail by recording the click on the page and matching it to the first open of the app. The steps are laid out in how web-to-app attribution works.

Web-to-app is narrower than measuring a website. It covers the handoff and what follows in the app. Activity on the site before the click is a separate subject, described under web event.