Advertisers are expected to piece together touchpoints along a customer journey into a cohesive map — that means linking web and app experiences in a multi-channel approach. However, if you deal with both channels with the same strategies, you’ll reach disappointing results. What’s more, you’ll probably reach some dead ends.
This blog post explains how web and app customer journeys are different, and how you can circumvent dead ends in attribution and mapping with the right advertising and tracking strategies for each.
Web customer journeys are more familiar to us because they've been around longer — though, with mobile devices and apps being years old, the excuse is growing thin. These are the fast facts on how web users approach browsing differently:
The highest percentage of web use is found among B2B SaaS tools
Web customer journeys are typically optimized for desktop users, though many users access them through mobile
On mobile devices, users spend 10% of their time on web apps
Hence, the web customer journey is optimized for desktop. We expect web users to spend more time on site, have greater patience for loading times and complicated directories, and do complex tasks.
For these reasons, we can ask more of web users during the customer journey, such as reading longer blog posts, filling out bigger forms, or downloading gated content. Web users typically live by the browser tab, meaning we can expect them to compare and consider multiple resources.
Apps, on the other hand, are the staple of mobile usage. These are the reasons many B2C companies work mobile-first:
Mobile apps have a 157% higher conversion rate than mobile websites
Users explore 4.2 times more products per session on mobile apps than on mobile sites
The mobile customer journey revolves around speed and convenience. Mobile devices are extensions of our daily life, and the reason we favor them on our phones is they’re optimized for the platform.
An app journey requires a huge hurdle: convincing users to download the app to interact with your company. To do this, many advertisers employ apps to advertise their own (think Instagram, Facebook, etc.) as well as pop-ups on their own sites if they identify a user is on mobile.
Both journeys require tailored approaches, but at times they’ll converge and overlap. Here's a breakdown of each stage:
Customer Journey Stage | Web | Mobile |
|---|---|---|
Awareness |
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Consideration |
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Decision |
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Retention |
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Mobile focuses on agility and personalization, while the web supports longer exploration and research-driven customer journeys. Using both mobile and web strategies gives users flexibility, which is ultimately what they want.
Even if mobile users opt for an app 90% of the time, have a mobile version of your website for the 10% of usage on web. Users tend to stay longer, navigating multiple pages and engaging with richer content like videos, infographics, and in-depth product guides. This makes them better customers in the long run.
The funnel stages themselves are one aspect of disparate user journeys, but these are a few other key differences that explain why we can’t treat them the same way.
For instance, web sessions tend to be longer as users explore multiple pages and resources.
Mobile sessions are shorter, often driven by micro-moment behaviors. (Unless, of course, you’re scrolling through an addictively entertaining app.)
Web users are more likely to be patient. Because of this, you can leverage advanced features like high-resolution imagery and video autoplay. Customers are used to waiting longer load times on web.
Meanwhile on apps, features like GPS, camera integration, and push notifications play into the big desire of app users: personalization. How often do you say yes to notifications on your web browser? On the other hand, you might be more willing to accept notifications from an app.
Web users are more likely to complete high-value or complex purchases on desktop; it’s easier to navigate on web.
However, mobile purchases have the upper hand on last-minute buys. They’re typically quick and impulsive, facilitated by one-click payments and saved credentials. They’re also likely to build high loyalty — if customers have downloaded your app and made purchases, you can reel them back in with push notifications and their saved payment info.
Yes, you’ll need to tailor your advertising for web and apps, since they have different goals and some methods aren’t available on each platform.
Web advertisers expect to have display ads, search engine marketing, and other on-browser activities in their arsenal.
Your ads can promote long-form content, such as blogs or webinars, to attract users in the consideration stage.
Since lots of web discovery occurs through browsers, SEO plays a significant role in driving web traffic.
App advertising is different. For apps, securing an install is always the first barrier to break. Because of this, you have to promote you app on the app stores, encourage website visitors to download, and advertise for app installs on other apps.
Once you’ve convinced a user your app is worth installing, though, it’s easier to advertise to your audience with push notifications and retargeting.
Yes! Pixels don’t work for apps, and without a pixel, you’d have no insight into user interaction in your app.
With an app, you’ll want a mobile measurement partner (MMP) to understand in-app engagement. Not having an MMP is like not having a pixel placed, so you limit yourself to upper funnel strategies with no signal of who to retarget.
While pixels and UTM parameters are your best friends for web, you’ll need a different plan for apps. Thankfully, MMPs are fairly simple to set up, and they’ll put you ahead of companies that are limited to app store analytics around downloads and store pageviews.
A user’s journey across all platforms and devices needs to feel seamless, but on our end, multi-channel marketing is not easy. We’re pulling together data from disparate sources and juggling several platforms to pull off cross-channel experiences.
Connecting customer journeys across web and mobile apps doesn’t have to be difficult. AdRoll integrates with AppsFlyer to give you accurate cross-channel attribution across web and mobile with simple, easy-to-use dashboards. Get in touch with our team to learn more about running app campaigns.
Last updated on January 31st, 2025.