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How To Drive Installs with App Invites

May 11, 2015ByBen Padget

A few weeks ago at F8 2015, we launched App Invites, a way for people to invite their friends to use your app by sending personal, customized invites. Many people start using an app because they heard about it from a friend or saw someone have a great experience on their phone. App Invites gives developers a way to accelerate that word-of-mouth discovery and increase app installs across all mobile platforms. Hundreds of developers are experimenting with this model and today we're highlighting some best practices to make it even easier for developers to get started.

Our Best Practices Guide outlines the most effective ways to integrate Invites in your app, and one of the most important considerations is placement. We recommend placing the entry to App Invites in a prominent location that makes it as easy as possible for people to invite their friends to your app. Of course, that location will differ for every app — So as you consider where it might make sense to place App Invites within your app, we'd like to share two examples of apps that are successfully driving growth with well-placed Invites integrations.

Goodreads

Goodreads helps people discover and discuss books. With App Invites, Goodreads members can invite their friends to try the app, so they can share what they're reading and find more books.

Placement Best Practice: Goodreads has placed the entry to App Invites in two prominent and logical places within the app. First, they've implemented a prompt to “invite your friends” on the main Feed screen, where people spend much of their time in the Goodreads app. Second, there's a prompt at the top of the Friend List screen, a place where people naturally go to see updates from their friends. In both of these places, Goodreads uses phrases like “Find out what your friends are reading” and “Grow your reading network” to clearly articulate how a person can improve their Goodreads experience by inviting their friends.

With smart placement and clear, explanatory copy, Goodreads is averaging one install for every five App Invites sent.

"App Invites gives our members a great way to invite their closest friends to join Goodreads and share in their favorite books. It has been very effective and popular with our users, likely due to the power of a social recommendation." Brian Rosenblat, Goodreads VP of Product.

Mixcloud

Mixcloud is an online streaming service that features crowdsourced music and radio content.

Placement Best Practice: Like Goodreads, Mixcloud has also put the entry to App Invites in a visible and logical location. On Mixcloud's root navigation screen, you can find “Invite” right under “Notifications” — a placement that's easy for people to find on a screen that they likely visit often to see notices and updates.

With this successful integration, Mixcloud averages one install for every seven Invites sent.

Mixcloud co-founder Mat Clayton says, "We're excited to integrate Facebook App Invites into our app, as we've seen an increased demand from users wanting to share the app with other friends. This now enables a quick and easy way for them to do that."

Analytics

Once you've identified the perfect placement and added App Invites to your app, you can use analytics to see how your integration is performing. Just go to your app's analytics tab, and under “Integrations,” find “Invites.” Here, you can track sender flow opens, sender flow completions, send flow click-through rate, number of individual recipients, and total installs generated.

In early testing, developers are already seeing real results and increased installs using App Invites, and we look forward to helping developers grow their businesses even more as we improve this product over time. To learn more about App Invites, please visit our documentation, and for additional best practices, check out our App Invites Best Practices guide.