Test your Referral
It is expected that you have setup the Test Environment before proceeding to this step, and have taken into account all the recommendations cited in the documentation for test environment setup.
For the sake of clarity & context, below call-out is being repeated.
Let us now run a cycle to emulate the Referral Workflow for your ideal user.
STEP 1 Share the App from Referrer’s device
- In Device A, i.e. Referrer’s device, open the App
- Ensure you’ve logged in with a valid email ID (or whichever login credential prompted by the app). Remember that this Login ID is the primary index for all your user relevant searches on the Influencers tab under Analytics section.
- Navigate to the Referral Screen, and share the app through any of the listed social channels (email, text, whatsapp, messenger, etc.) to Device B i.e. Friend’s device
Analytics Lookup: Steps (Click to Expand)
#1 Navigate to the Influencers tab & Find Device A
From the dashboard go to the Analytics section, navigate to the Influencers tab and find Device A
#2 Validate Increment in Invites
Against the Device A user in the Influencer tab, validate that there is a unitary increase on the Invites sent by the user.
Step 2 Click on the Invitation Link
On Device B, click or act upon the Invitation Link sent from Device A.
This action should redirect you ultimately to the Play or App Store, prompting you to download the app.
Once you reach the app installation activity at the Store, please avoid installing/downloading the app from that page
Analytics Lookup: Steps (Click to Expand)
#1 Navigate to the Influencers tab & Find Device A
From the dashboard go to the Analytics section, navigate to the Influencers tab and find Device A
#2 Validate Increment in Clicks
Against the Device A user in the Influencer tab, validate that there is a unitary increase on the Clicks sent by the user.
Checkup on Link Clicks
You should also check on the attribution of the Link Click. This is the most accurate level of analytics you can check your integration on.
- Navigate through the Device Info (i.e. click on the green info icon against the user),
- Toggle to the Link Clicks tab
- Check that latest entry here
This should correspond to the Device B’s details i.e. same model, make, IP address, closest timestamp, etc.
The timestamp would actually correspond to whenever the Link was clicked upon.
Step 3 Install Test App
Now install the Test App on Device B.
This new install is not attributed to the referrer yet. To do so, there are two possible ways depending upon the type of attribution setting configured for your app, which are either by using the Install Referrer Broadcast for Link based attribution or by submitting referral code for Referral Code based attribution. You can also use both of them if your app is configured for Link + Code attribution, so that referral code could be used for attribution in case the Link based attribution gets failed for some reason. Following is the detail for each type of attribution setting.
#1 Link based attribution
When the app is installed after clicking on the referral link, the Google Play Store would fire the Install Referrer broadcast for the app, sending the referrer data as part of the Intent extras’ with the broadcast, which will be received by the Broadcast Receiver inside AppVirality SDK and the referrer data would be sent to the server post SDK initialization.
To make AppVirality’s Broadcast Receiver receive the Install Referrer broadcast, you must declare it inside your app’s Android.Manifest.xml as shown here.
Now, in normal case when you will install the app from Google Play Store, it will fire Install Referrer broadcast but while testing your app you can simulate the same using the following ADB command for sending the broadcast.
Run the following in your Android Studio Terminal or Windows Command Prompt:
- adb shell am broadcast -a com.android.vending.INSTALL_REFERRER -n <your-package-name>/.<com.appvirality.AppViralityInstallReferrerReceiver> --es "referrer" "avclk=9480n-bigb175"here:
“avclk = 9480n-bigb175” is the parameter, where 9480n is the Click ID and bigb175 is the Referral Code.
How to obtain avclk?
Run the Referral Link, for example: http://r.appvirality.com/type117-1k1/14, in the browser.
You would be redirected to the app’s webpage, since you have accessed via the browser. Obviously, you’d now have a new URL in your browser. The tail at the end of the new URL would have the avclk parameter, which basically is the click ID.
#2 Code based attribution
Ideally, if you had configured the Welcome Screen - it should appear right here.
It is a good way to prod the user towards making the signing up activity.
This would look something like as shown in the image here.
If you have setup a referral campaign to be driven via a Referral Code, you would need to add the referrer’s Referral Code i.e. Device A’s referral code right here.
Analytics Lookup: Steps (Click to Expand)
#1 Navigate to the Influencers tab
From the dashboard, go to the Analytics section and navigate to the Influencers tab.
#2 Search for Device A
Use the login ID(email, mobile number, etc) registered in Device A to search and find the entries for the particular user, from the search field at the top right corner of this tab {highlighted in Red}
Validate the Invite, Click & Install count increase to reflect attribution due to Device B’s app install through Device A’s referral {highlighted in Yellow}
#3 Check if new user is added in Friends’ list
- Expand the line item detailing the influence by Device A as shown in the image below, by clicking on the entry or on the + icon
- Navigate to the Friends section here and you should find Device B listed at the top, since this list is sorted per latest date and Device B was the latest friend who converted !!! mind you - not the latest to be invited !!!
#4 Check for entries in Device Info
- Navigate to device details of Device B through the info icon, and go to the Events tab
- Cross check if the Install event has been registered here for this device.
- If your reward rules(defined in your Campaign Setup page) had any reward for either of the user type (Referrer or Friend) upon Install event, check that the respective user has received the reward. You may do so from the device info panel directly; access this via the info icon against each such user. Then, just navigate to the Rewards tab and check for the latest reward.
Step 4 Verify Sign-Up
The most common implementation process ensures that the Welcome Screen Call to Action initiates the Sign-up of the user. Nevertheless, since it is the very next in order & importance - Sign-up event verification is important now.
It is expected that you have setup the callbacks for the Sign-Up activity while integrating the app.
Analytics Lookup: Steps (Click to Expand)
#1 Ensure User Login inside app
In the Friend device i.e. Device B make sure the user has signed up.
If that has not been done, do so foremost. The Login Credentials used here would reflect directly in the Influencers tab under Analytics section
#2 Navigate to Influencers tab
Like in the case of ‘verifying Install event’ explanation previously, the foremost thing to be done is to reach the Influencers tab, immediately after you have ensured the Sign-Up activity has been completed.
#3 Search for Friend Device & check Events
- Find the registered email/Login ID for the Device B, and search it in the Influencers tab.
- Once you have obtained the Influencer, open the Device Info for the user - by clicking on the green Info Icon
- Navigate to the Events tab and you should be able to see the Sign-up event registered for this user in this tab. Make a note of the timestamp(shown time is in UTC) for your own analysis.
#4 Check Rewards
Method One: Access Device Info of each Influencer i.e. Friend & Referrer and navigate to their Rewards tab
Method Two: Navigate to the Referrer Rewards & Friend Rewards tab under the Analytics section respectively, and search for the individual users using their login IDs.
Step 5 Uninstall, Reset & Rerun
Now, moving forward would imply running the same scenario against a wide range of variants, which implies the above referral flow must be validated across multiple devices - changing the stakeholders every time.
You should ideally come up with as many test runs as possible. Before you run the new cycle, here is what you must do:
- Uninstall the app from the Friend device i.e. Device B, if you want to run the same device as Friend again.
- Reset the device, as was shown earlier while setting up Test environment (navigate to Testing from Dashboard, Click on Reset against the Device you want)
- Rerun the entire cycle for Referral Activity, beginning from Step 1 above
This completes one whole cycle of a Referral Activity
Now you may come up with multiple queries, doubts & questions - while doing the above activity…
Go ahead & check out the Basic Troubleshooting Guidelines (or Testing FAQs, as we term it)