How to invite users to your app | Hacker News Reader

How to invite users to your app

medium.com

28 pointscomatose_kid20 comments

Is it just me or are these blogs posts increasing more and more about name dropping?

Blah blah blah artsnapz, blah artsnapz. 7 out of the 10 paragraphs had the word artsnapz in it, and 1 out of 2 pictures had it.

It doesn't mean the advice is any less helpful or informative because of it, but reading it was like watching a commercial.

Because, you know, the entire point of the post is how they did it for their own product.

Is it really needed to have a 1226 x 515 px header image for a blog? I understand that some of the readers are using the latest "retina" Macbooks or 52-inch displays, but on my couple year old Macbook I can just see the top of the title when loading this page.

The body font is far too large as well.

Why not add a link as the 3rd step in addition to the invite code? Once the app's installed on a user's device you can pass through the code via a custom url scheme and avoid the possible drop off of having a user mis-enter their code. (you'd probably still want the code there in addition for users reading the email on a non iOS device)

That's a good idea - we'll give that some thought as we work on streamlining our login flow (which is probably a good topic for a future post)

You're already storing the code so why not just join the invite with the email and when the user logs in with an email flagged with an invite the user's state is already known?

I'm a big fan of delivering utility with less barriers. It probably is worse for your "active users" graph, but I always feel warmer and fuzzier about apps that I can engage with at my own pace.

So, in this case, that's an argument for attaching a reasonable-sized copy of the image to the email, or maybe a bit of embedded HTML with an obfuscated link or something that redirects if you want better tracking of what's going on / privacy knobs. Sure, some people will never register for an account because they'll get all their utility out of the emails. But on the other hand, all sorts of non-tech-focused family members will get to see the artwork, which is what your users want in the first place.

Glympse stands out in my recent memory as an app that did a great job of this.

Your children’s profile photos and names (added during registration when the app is first installed) are included in the email. Isn’t that cute? This immediately grabs the interest of the recipient.We think this makes it incredibly more likely that they will use the app.

Make the pictures bigger, and include a picture of some art. Also, don't think. Test. You can't guess your way to success. I see some issues with the ad you are currently sending, and testing would allow you to discover which (I'm not telling).

Also, this is a bit creepy. Once you start spamming the address book of your users, a lot of people will get pictures of the children. People who should not know them.

But when the recipient downloads the app, there is no way for artsnapz to know that they were invited by you. And this is where the Invite Code comes in - that’s the alphanumeric code ‘123ABC’ above. This code is generated uniquely to track each invitation you email out.

Can't you use an URL? The extra step typically reduces conversions.

I think this is a rather creepy product, and has many potential legal issues. Though the financials look good, given how this "company" can start selling overpriced printouts of the "art" to family members. Given 10,000 families. Three users per family (uncle, parent, grandparent). One printed art per month. Say $5 per printed art. That's a good amount of money for a simple social sharing app.

(artsnapz founder here) Thanks for the feedback.

We don't (now or ever) plan on spamming the address book of our users.

We didn't show the entire flow, but the user chooses who the email is going to - it comes up in the standard email dialog & they see it before they hit 'send'.

Try the flow, we don't think it is creepy at all but if you still do, shoot me an email with suggestions - ajay@a4labs.com.

We are parents ourselves and are very sensitive to our children's privacy.

Are you A/B testing?

Depending on how many users this app has, A/B testing may not be possible. After working for a larger company that had lots of traffic, I started to take it for granted that I could run an experiment for a day and get an answer. When bootstrapping a new product, you just have to throw stuff at the wall based on intuition (and customer development) and hope something clicks so you can get that stream of traffic to A/B test with.

You can run very small tests, though. They will not scale, but will give some insight into what the current user base prefers.

That all depends if you can get statistical significance. The catch-22 here is that the only way to really get statistical significance without a lot of data is to have a clear winner, which would have probably jumped out as a better solution regardless of how rigorous your testing methodology is.

The worst thing you can do is run a test and jump to conclusions based upon limited data.

How about keeping track of the e-mail invites internally and as soon as an "invited e-mail" signs up, connect them with the users who ever sent an invite to that e-mail address? This way you don't need an access code (which can be very annoying, especially with mobile apps) or special links at all.

I guess the problem is that if they enter their email address, they want to verify that it's actually the owner of the email, not some random person. So they need to eventually send the code.

They may want to give the user a choice of clicking a link in the email once the app is installed that enters the code for them.

Agreed - the only concern was that the user would sign up with a different email address than the one used to invite them with - in which case we wouldn't be able to link them together.

Well, how often do people sign up with a different e-mail address (especially the target group of parents and seniors)? You should measure this. Only solve it when it becomes a real problem.

I used to think like this as well, but you're basically falling in the trap of sacrificing usability for 95% while you solve the problem for the minority of 5%. Let's say your conversion rates drop by 25% because you have this hurdle. In an attempt to save the 5%, you're now at a net loss of 20%.

Do other parents really care about seeing someone elses kids artwork. I can understand the keep/cataloging but the share?

I have a daughter and would love find an easy way to catalogue and keep her stuff, but other than to show her grandparents I have no need to share this with others nor do I care about what artwork other peoples kids are producing. Just my 2 cents.

I would just save the email that the invite was sent to and save the invite against it. When the user signs up with that email I would know they have an invite waiting for them. There's a chance they might not use the same email address to sign up but this makes a much cleaner flow for the user.

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