Who can tell about the application better than the users themselves? Google App Invites - try to practice

Devoted users of a mobile application can not only tell about all the advantages, opportunities and disadvantages of your application, but also, of course, recommend it to other users. We all listen to the opinions of our friends, and, accordingly, with very high probability we will try to install a mobile application, which our friend and acquaintance will recommend to us.
A few months ago, Google announced a new product for mobile apps. Google App Invites.



We decided to try to introduce Google App Invites into our breastfeeding mothers app and in this post we’ll tell you about our experience.

How it works?
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The recommendations themselves are good, but how do you push the user to send a recommendation? Why should the inviting user recommend the application? And why should the invitee install the application on the recommendation?

We decided that the inviting and the invited should receive pleasant bonuses for their actions. A nice bonus is a discount on the version of the application with full functionality.

So we decided that:

• An inviting person whose five invitations will be accepted (users will install the application) will receive a 90% discount on the full version of the application
• The invitee will receive a 25% discount on the full version of the application if he accepts the invitation.

The user clicks “Invite” and the user’s contact list opens in a special window and a message is inserted. The user selects contacts with whom he wants to share the application, and either SMS or e-mail is sent to them.



How to track invitations?

But there remains a small problem: how to track the sent invites and how to take into account that this particular invite was used. Unfortunately, at the moment Google App Invites only allows you to find out that you were invited, but does not store this information anywhere. We used the parse.com service, in which we record information about the sent invites and their use. Those. if the invited user has installed the application, then we fix the redemption of the invite, and the inviting user in the application can see how many invitations he has left to send.

There is a small problem. If the inviting user deletes the application and re-installs it, all his previous sent invites will be lost. This is due to the fact that we do not want to collect personalized information about users and use a random ID.

How to provide discounts?

Everything is simple. Additional functionality in the application is unlocked via the in-app purchase purchase (IAP). We have added three IAPs with different price ranges in the app:

• common price,
• discount price 25%
• price with 90% discount

Depending on the privilege received by the user, he will be able to buy the application for a particular price. The fact of purchase is recorded in Google Play.

What is the process of introducing App Invites into an application?



The integration process itself is quite simple and is implemented through Google Play Services. The integration process is described in detail here:
https://developers.google.com/app-invites/android/guides/app

You can integrate App Invites with Google Analytics to track the performance of invitations in the app.
Details here https://developers.google.com/app-invites/android/guides/analytics



App Invites is currently in beta. Service is constantly evolving. Recently, the company announced the possibility of customizing not only the letter header, but also the letter body.

Brief video presentation

Video demonstration of App Invites


findings

We list the pros and cons of the service and draw small conclusions

Pros:

• Native contact support
• Parcel e-mail and sms invitations
• Simple integration into the application.
• IOS and Android support

Minuses:

• You cannot generate a unique link that could not just be sent by e-mail, but shared on social networks or posts.
• the fact of sending the invitation and the fact of using the invitation are not recorded automatically, additional tools are needed
• the service is still in beta

Unfortunately, there is no one universal and unified service that would allow you to easily and easily make recommendations of an application from an application and record all events (dispatch, use). Google App Invites is a good enough solution for recommending an application, because it uses the user's contact list, and there it’s usually the most important contacts. But it is necessary to use additional fixing tools for sending invitations.

You can see how App Invites works in our Breastfeeding app . Install the application and go to the menu in the "Invite" section.

We will be glad if in the comments you share your experience with the implementation of App Invites or recommendation services.

Sincerely, Artem Demyanov
and the Whisper Arts team