Options for app request on your website

Our apps can request and handle websites inside a so called web view inside your app (basically a browser engine inside the native app). While requesting the URL the app can identify as a client to the web server, so that the web server possibly adjust the provided website or that your tracking tools can identify app traffic..

Option 1: User Agent

There is already an industry standard for device identification that we use. It’s the user agent string. The user agent string is a field in the HTTP header that can identify the app that is making the request. In a web browsing experience, the user agent is set by the browser (which is also an app).

Now, instead of a browser, our native app will be making the HTTP request. We can include custom information in this User-Agent that helps the web service to identify the app.

Additionally it’s also possible to add a certain field of the users profile to the request in order to allow differentiation between certain products, subscriptions or memberships. The information provided could for instance look like

💡 USER_AGENT;role=director

Your web service can then easily control access to certain content the way it’s done in the web.

Option 2: Custom URL

If you want to set up a dedicated template and use this in the app, you can also put this on a custom URL scheme. This is usually a simple and secure way to set this up in a Web CMS like WordPress.

So for instance you could provide this custom template on a URL that adds “/app” after your domain, like yourdomain.com/app/123 instead of yourdomain.com/123.

The good thing: once agreed upon a certain scheme the app can add this to all domains of yours opened in a web view in the app. If users want to share this URL to other users, the app of course uses the basic URL without the manipulation.

Option 3: User Data

For apps that include a user login, there is also the option to provide dedicated user data in case the user is logged in. This allows the web server to make adjustments based on a specific type of user, for instance to give access to certain features or types of content.

We can provide whatever user data we have in our user management and whatever we get via SSO. That often can be a specific ID that helps your user management to identify clients (or groups of clients).

Certain parameters can also be added to show the app as a client on base of UTM parameters in Google Analytics easily. So the URL could look like this:

https://domain.com/articles/hello-word?utm_source=4.0.0&utm_medium=app&utm_campaign=reader

As an alternative to the use of the custom header, the app can also set a specific cookie that helps to identify the user (basically like in the browser). The app can write any existing value or identification into the cookie manager of the app and also define URLs where to use it.

How to set it up

The set up is fairly easy and consists of the following steps:

Discuss and define options:

• Define info in User Agent - User Agent can be any text string

• Define User Data - User Data can be any unique identifier (ID or even email)

• Define Cookie to be set (if this is used instead of Header)

Implement:

• Add User Agent, User Data to the app request or enable app to set cookie (will be done by us via app update, but its just a setting on our platform)

• Add logic to your web service (needs to be done by you, depending on what u want to achieve, what is doable etc)

Test

• Deploy and test - we provide the updated apps that can then just request URLs

What we can do with it

This logic can used for multiple things:

• deliver content without a paywall to the app or specific users

• hide the header of the mobile website to improve experience to consume the content

• hide other modal overlays like cookie banners, newsletters ads or other modules

• add other kinds of site manipulations like hiding adds or other advertising modules

What is doable and how difficult it is, of course depends upon your web set up, your server, your user management.

Happy to discuss options and opportunities!