The Hidden Costs of Broken User Journeys Between Web and App

Apr 17, 2025

Mobile phones are an integral part of our daily lives. Unsurprisingly, mobile traffic has increased over the last few years, and mobile apps have gained even more relevance. Users often own multiple devices and switch between them during their specific journeys. We expect the transition between websites and apps to work seamlessly. Often, those journeys are broken and don’t work as needed and intended. What businesses don’t realise is that such user experiences impact engagement and conversion directly and, thus, represent substantial hidden costs.

This article dives into the hidden costs of broken user journeys between the web and the app.

Disconnected Experiences: The Web-to-App Problem

Have you ever come across broken journeys? Think about the last time you used a company’s website and app and experienced one of the following challenges.

You click on a marketing link and find yourself on a generic app store page.
A link you click opens the homepage instead of the specific content you were looking for.
The installed app does not open; instead, you land on the webpage, and you find yourself manually searching for the product in the app.

Those incidents happen continuously and are symptoms of a widespread problem affecting businesses across industries. According to a report by Mobot, “only 28.6% of attempted deep links on Facebook’s app succeed”¹, which poses a direct financial impact in light of more than a third of digital ad spending going to Facebook in the US in the first half of 2024².

The Triple Threat: How Broken User Flows Damage Your Business

Broken user journeys have consequences beyond users’ frustration. Let’s examine three areas in which your business will be impacted.

1. Wasted Marketing Spend

We spend more and more on digital ads to drive traffic to our digital properties -13 % more year over year alone in Germany, according to Sensor Tower³. With digital ads targeting acquisition and re-engagement of users, smooth deep linking becomes crucial for the success of your marketing program and the efficiency of the budget used. Besides wasting real money due to failed attempts of connecting users to your content and offerings, you lose out long-term by reduced user retention. According to AppsFlyer, “when comparing apps that run re-engagement campaigns vs. apps that do not, we can see that the first group is enjoying a staggering 85% uplift in week 12 retention rates”⁴.

2. Lost Conversions

Failing to bring users to the content you advertised not only drains your marketing budget. You are losing out on conversions, too. According to Think with Google, “advertisers who have implemented deep linking see over 2X uplift in conversion rate”⁵. Seamless web-to-app flows can help to compensate for the eight percentage points higher cart abandonment rates we observe on mobile devices compared to the desktop web.

Looking at data from February 2024 to January 2025, the average car abandonment rate on mobile devices is 78% compared to 70% on the desktop web.⁶ With an average of 76% of eCommerce traffic⁷ coming from mobile devices, you need to provide frictionless entry to your app as 88% of the time people spend on their mobile device is in apps⁸.

3. Missed User Trust

More time spent in your app means higher engagement and increased loyalty. Especially if you try to attract a younger audience, you want to build journeys that lead to your mobile app. According to a report by Tapcart from 2024, younger generations (Gen Z and Millennials, who were born after 1981) show a growing preference for mobile apps, with about a third in favour of apps⁹.

But how do you attract those users? With a trustworthy brand which provides a good user experience. If 32% of users are ready to stop using a brand they love after just having one bad experience, based on a 2018 PwC survey¹⁰, you want to make sure your acquisition journeys are well constructed. Your mobile app is even increasing your brand’s trustworthiness according to 53% overall and a staggering 71% of Gen Z survey respondents¹¹.

The Potential of Getting It Right

How does the grass look on the other side for companies that successfully addressed cross-platform user experience challenges? Branch data suggests that converting mobile web users to loyal app users is 82% less expensive than running app install ads¹². Think with Google states that “according to a recent global study [they] performed with Kantar, 87% of retailers agree that their app users are more loyal and have a higher lifetime value than nonusers”¹³. So companies experience less cost and increased loyalty, and with functioning and well-designed deep linking, you can nearly double your conversion rates compared to paid media, according to AppsFlyer data from 2024¹⁴.

Understanding the Challenge

Let’s not talk about solutions right now but try to understand the full scope of the challenges of cross-platform journeys.

Technical Complexity

Our users are present on multiple devices, operating systems, and browsers. In combination with the various marketing channels for paid and owned media, we have complex journey scenarios that require careful planning, implementation, and thorough testing.

User Expectations

Your users expect seamless experience and working transitions between desktop, mobile web and apps. Friction or even failure leads to lower trust and brand loyalty, with the competition stepping in.

Looking Ahead

Ignoring broken cross-platform journeys will increase costs and further impact business metrics. We need to stay on top of continuously changing consumer behaviour and treat those journeys as strategic benefits rather than technical issues. It is not about user frustration but how we impact marketing effectiveness, conversion rates, user loyalty and brand perception.

In my next article, I will explore why cross-platform user experience matters more than ever.

The Insights Bridge by Jakob Gehring

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