A guide to build a seamless customer journey between web and app.
This guide provides helpful tips and best practices for creating a seamless web and app journey for your consumers who use multiple touch points as they explore and decide on products and services.
Your customers don't think like marketers. While you might have distinct channels internally, your customers are using all of them continuously. As consumers become increasingly channel agnostic (93% use both web and app to research, browse, purchase1), and become less brand loyal, connecting with them by offering seamless channel integration becomes crucial. This will not only benefit the customer but also your business.
Google AI makes it easier than ever to connect and enhance your web and app experience so you can drive a 21% increase in your web campaign ROI2.
The full scope of driving more value from web and app includes using both to better measure, optimize, and grow your campaigns.
On this page
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Measure across both web and app holistically
- A measurement strategy for web and app is crucial to capture the lifetime value of your users
- Gain a clearer view of your customer needs by measuring engagement across both web and app. Plus, apps can help you build a strong foundation of valuable first-party data.
- Web and app combined measurement tracking includes:
- Web-based click trackers that measure actions via modified URLs
- Web-based tags/pixels embedded on websites
- App-based SDKs that measure in-app events
- App-based deep links that drive in-app traffic and track actions
- With this holistic view into your data, you can do more to improve business strategy and serve your customers.
- Improve profitability by tracking web and app user conversion rates and analyze customer acquisition cost and return across channels
- Reduce customer service costs by using web and app performance insights to understand how you can invest in digital channels rather then offline for cost-efficiencies
- Increase average order value (AOV) to identify the behaviors of "high value users" to fuel future acquisition and retention strategies
- Maintain highest possible customer sentiment by diving into sentiment metrics, including net promoter score, to see which app features and experiences are driving or eroding customer sentiment, including on-location experience. Explore ways you can drive repeat visits based on this data.
- One measurement solution that helps you gain a holistic view of performance is Google Analytics 4. Google Analytics 4 delivers privacy-centric analytics across both web and app by:
- Collecting and enriching first-party data in a privacy-safe way
- Deriving powerful business insights by leveraging the power of Google AI
- Displaying both web and app reporting under one unified view
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Optimize for your most valuable customers
- Adopt Web to App Connect to help increase conversions
- You can easily optimize your campaigns and drive on average two times higher conversion rates3 by ensuring that your current web campaigns, including your Search and Performance Max campaigns, also direct traffic to your app if a user has it installed.
- When you use Web to App Connect, users who don’t have your app are sent to your mobile website and users who have your app installed are sent automatically to the correct in-app page via deep linking. With app users often buying more frequently and spending more, not optimizing to users who have your app is a missed opportunity.
- Deliver a seamless web to app experience - Set up deep links to send your users directly to the relevant page in your app and make it easier for them to complete their intended action. Use the deep link validator (under Tools -> Planning -> App Advertising Hub) to identify the URLs to deep link and deep link calculator to estimate the impact of deep linking.
- Set up app conversion tracking - Set up app conversion tracking with Google Analytics 4 or one of our App Attribution Partners to learn which conversions take place in your app. Enable URL parameters to track deep links and future-proof your measurement. These may include gBraid or gCLID.
- Use bidding that improves business value - Select the in-app conversion actions that you want to optimize for your web campaigns. Smart Bidding automatically drives higher performance for your business goals, like maximizing conversions or conversion value. It trains bidding models to deliver ads more efficiently, focusing on value-only conversions, so you can re-engage with your most loyal customers.
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Grow by adding more high value customers to your customer base
- Invest in App Campaigns for installs to engage your most valuable customers
- With better measurement and strong web to app connections, it's time to get more users to download your app. Doing so, ensures your marketing programs build a healthy positive flywheel effect: as you increase the number of users who have your app installed, you can increase redirects from your web campaigns to your app and measure the impact across channels, driving higher conversion and AOV.
- Leverage first-party data to enrich campaign signals - Tailor and improve your App Campaigns’ performance by utilizing your first-party data, such as age, gender or browsing history, for which apps are a generous source.
- Adjust bidding according to your business - Train bidding models to deliver ads more efficiently by bidding against only-value driving conversions for your business, whether it’s installs or post install conversions. Enable more advanced bidding solutions during demand peaks, such as Black Friday or New Year’s Eve, to improve business performance with Seasonality Adjustments for App Campaigns.
- Adopt an asset mindset - Try to add as much variety in both messaging and asset type to your creative assets to revolutionize your creative strategy and make your campaign smarter with Google AI helping you meet your advertising goals.
Discover how Adidas drives impact through web and app channels by following these steps:
How adidas drives impact across web and app channels with Google AI | #GML2024
Your full value of web and app final checklist:
Set up tracking
 To get started with Google Analytics 4, link your Google Ads account and start tracking conversion events.
To get started with an App Attribution Partner, link it with Google Ads and refer to these guidelines to get started.
Import app conversions
Ensure your conversion settings are accurate. Note: iOS conversions need to count every conversion to track gBraid.
Import session_start events to enable deep-link reporting within Ad Destination (under Campaigns -> Segment -> Ad Destination).
Activate Smart Bidding
Mark core events as “Primary” to include in Smart Bidding (for Search Ads 360 (SA360) guidance, reach out to your Account team).
Ensure auto-tagging is enabled for your Google Ads account.
Deep link existing app users
Campaign URLs should be set up as iOS Universal Links and Android App Links by your App Developer team.
Use the Web to App Connect tool in the Google Ads UI under (Tools -> Planning -> App Advertising Hub) to isolate top deep-linking opportunities.
Grow your high-value user base
Launch App campaigns in Google Ads by setting your bid and budget, and uploading creative.
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1. Google and Greenberg mWeb and App Study, US Only, Q2 2021.
2. Google Internal Data 2023.
3. Google Internal Data Global Feb-March Experiment 2022.
