Boost Your iOS App Visibility with iTunes App Meta Tag

Apple introduced a meta tag called the iTunes App Meta Tag, which makes it easy to promote your app on your website. When the iTunes Meta App Tag is enabled, it will display a banner at the top of your webpage when users visit the site through their iPhone.

On the iPad, the banner is displayed along with some screenshots of the app.

When users tap on this banner, they will be redirected to the App Store.

How to Add the iTunes Meta Tag

The iTunes Meta Tag is specified as follows:

<meta name="apple-itunes-app" content="app-id=myAppStoreID, affiliate-data=myAffiliateData, app-argument=myURL">

This tag requests three parameters in the content attribute. The first is the App Unique ID, which you can get from the iTunes Link Maker, and this App ID parameter is required. The last two parameters, affiliate-data and app-argument, are optional.

This banner is smart. For example, when users have installed your app on their device, the View button will change to Open, and users will be redirected to the installed app instead of the App Store. If the user’s device does not support your app, the banner will not be displayed.

It is worth noting that this meta tag is only supported in iOS 6 and later versions. Users with earlier iOS versions will not see the banner.

Final Thoughts

If you have an iOS app related to your website, you should consider adding this meta tag to draw more attention to your app, despite being limited to iOS 6 and later versions.

Additionally, Windows 8 also provides a similar method with the msApplication-ID meta tag.