With the rise of photo-driven social media the market for photo editing apps has also grown exponentially to provide developers the chance to attract a user base potentially as large as the social media apps themselves. To date, there have been approximately 2 billion downloads of apps in the Photo & Video category.
High-Quality Photo Editing on Mobile
PicsArt is a mobile photo editor and drawing app that allows you to creatively transform your photos and share them with friends. PicsArt was named one of the top 5 “Hottest Startups of 2015” by Forbes and Google Play ranked PicsArt as one of the “Best Apps of 2015.”
Making Photos Social
PicsArt allowed users to directly share photos from the app on social channels such as SMS, Email, Twitter, and Facebook by sending or uploading them as attachments. However, they weren’t using this feature to acquire new users.
Turning Sharing into Growth
While users could successfully share the image with friends, PicsArt did not include a way for the people it was shared with to find the app. If they were interested in finding the app, users would have to search for the app name in their native app store. From there, if they found the app and downloaded it, they would be brought to the generic welcome screen and not the photo their friend shared.
The user experience was broken.
Making Content Sharing Better by Improving the User Experience
PicsArt chose Branch to improve its content sharing with deep linking.
Here’s the improved sharing user flow for PicsArt and its users.
- A user decides to share an image with their friends.
- Now the user receives a full-sized image (via SMS, email, Twitter, or Facebook) and a Branch-provided deep link.
- That link automatically detects whether the user has the app.
- If the user does have PicsArt, the link will immediately open directly to the shared image when clicked.
- If not, they’re taken to the respective app store.
- And that link takes them to the same shared image in the PicsArt app, even if they have to take a quick detour and install the app.
By using Branch deep links for content sharing, PicsArt users automatically received a better user experience – one where the content was front and center and easy to access.
Measuring the Benefits of Content Sharing with Deep Linking
Before integrating Branch, PicsArt could not attribute installs to their sharing feature. Since users were forced to search in the app store, they were attributed just the same as any other app store download.
With Branch deep links now powering their sharing process, PicsArt can properly attribute installs to the correct source. They now know if an install came from a sharing feature and compare its effectiveness at driving installs across other channels. As a result, PicsArt is better able to determine where to focus their growth efforts.
Content sharing is one of the major reasons our partners have integrated Branch. Looking for more examples? Check out how Vango doubled their one-month retention with content sharing or see other featured integrations.
Ready to implement content sharing? Read our docs or use the button below to signup and get started.