Magic links

The link that goes through your own website on the way to the store, why that buys you a better match, and what it costs you.

Every creator link Fictura mints is one of two shapes. The dashboard badges only one of them, in plum, on the Links table:

Direct — the tap goes straight to the store. Fewest steps between the tap and the install. This is the default and the one you get when nobody says otherwise.
Magic — the tap goes to your website first. The site knows who sent the person, and its download button comes back through the same link on the way to the store.

A Magic link is not a different product or a paid tier. It is the same /l/<slug> row with a different destination, and you can have both kinds on the same domain at the same time.

What a Magic link actually does

Say Fictura minted https://go.yoursite.com/l/ab12cd for a creator, and your website is yoursite.com.

Someone taps the link. Fictura logs a click and redirects to https://yoursite.com/?growth_slug=ab12cd&growth_click=<click id> — plus every fbclid / ttclid / gclid that rode in on the original tap, and utm_source / utm_campaign when the link names a source.
Your site loads with those parameters on the URL. Fictura's snippet reads them.
Your download button points back at https://go.yoursite.com/l/ab12cd?to=store.
That second hop logs a second click — the one that counts — and sends the visitor to the store.

Step 4 is the whole point, and it is worth being precise about why.

Why the second click is the good one

Attribution has to match an install to a click. The strength of that match depends on how close together in time and network the click and the install were.

On a Direct link the click is minted when the person first taps, which might be days before they get round to installing, possibly on a different network. On a Magic link the click that the install is matched against is minted at the moment they tap download, seconds before the install, from the same connection the install comes from. That is the strongest evidence probabilistic matching can be given.

If you are paying a creator for that install, this is the difference between a payout you can defend and one you are taking on faith.

What you give up

Honestly: a little conversion. Every extra step between a tap and a store page loses some people, and a Magic link adds one. Direct converts a bit better because it is shorter; Magic tells you more.

Pick Magic when the site earns its place — you want to make your own pitch before the store does, you want that traffic showing up in Google Search Console, or you are paying for the install and want the firmer match. Pick Direct otherwise.

Android is the interesting case

On a Direct link, Android goes to the Play Store with referrer=growth_slug=<slug>&growth_click=<id> attached. The Play Install Referrer API hands that string back to the SDK on first launch, which is the only fully deterministic path either store offers — no guessing at all.

A Magic link has to not do that on the first hop, or half your traffic would skip the website entirely and the link would be Direct in all but name. So a Magic link is stored with no Play Store URL of its own — that null is deliberate, not an omission. Android taps go to the website like every other platform.

The deterministic match is not lost. On the way back out, ?to=store falls back to the app's own Play address and still attaches the referrer payload. Android gets the website and the exact match.

Your site has to be running the snippet

A Magic link only pays off if the website knows how to read the creator off the incoming URL and put it back on the download button. If the site just ignores the parameters, you have added a step and bought nothing. Set the site up before you hand Magic links to creators.

Making one

Two ways, and they mint exactly the same row.

In the dashboard — Links → the creator link form. A Magic link needs your website address on file; if Fictura does not have one, it will ask for it once and keep it for every future Magic link.

By asking the agent — "make a Magic link for Jamie" is enough. It reads what is already on file, tells you in one message what it is about to make and on which domain, and mints it as soon as you say yes. If it is missing the website or a store address it asks for everything it needs in that same message rather than one question at a time.

Either way you get back one URL that works everywhere: an iPhone opens the site and then the App Store, an Android phone opens the site and then Play (and Play tells the app afterwards which link the person came from), a computer opens the site in a browser.

Telling them apart later

In Dashboard → Links, Magic links carry a filled plum badge. Nothing else in that table uses plum, so you can find them by scanning down the column. Direct links carry no badge at all — the absence is the signal, because putting a "normal" chip on every other row would be noise.

Hover the badge and it names the site the tap detours through.

What does not change

Both kinds live on the same branded domain, and both work on Fictura's own address as a fallback while a branded domain is still going live.
Both count clicks the same way, on the same link row, credited to the same creator.
Changing a link's destination or campaign later takes effect on the next click, including on a link already printed on something physical.