Testing Your Referral Program From Beginning to End

Once you've finished setting up your referral program for the first time, we recommend doing a test run of the program to make sure everything is set up as you want it.

This article will walk you through doing a test referral from beginning to end, just follow the steps below.

If you have a referral program that is up and running already and you are experiencing issues, you can also see our guide to troubleshooting referrals.

Referral test workflow

We will refer to both sides as "referring customer" and "the friend" respectively.

1. Choose two email addresses you want to use for the test. You'll use two different devices for (a) referring customer and the (b) the friend:
   
   1. Referring customer - This is the email that you will log into the store with.
   2. The friend - This is the email that you will refer to your store.
      You'll need to use two different devices and emails for each of these personas. For example, you could use your work email on your laptop/desktop for the referring customer, and your personal email from your cell phone for the friend.
      Please note:

      The email you use for the friend must have no purchase history on your site.
2. Confirm that your referral-related emails are "live" in your Yotpo triggered emails or Email Service Provider (ESP). Otherwise, no email will be sent.
3. Navigate to the referral page (/pages/refer) and log in using the email address of the referring customer.
    
4. Submit the friend's email and send it. This will trigger the Referral Share email to the friend.
5. Access the referral share email in the friend's inbox from a different IP Address and user agent to avoid being flagged. We suggest opening this email on your mobile device using data (turn wifi off).
6. Click the link to access your site's homepage.
7. On the homepage, wait until you see the Referral Welcome Popup -this popup will have the coupon code for the friend. Copy that coupon code.
8. Add products to your cart and proceed to checkout. NOTE: the total of the cart must be above the purchase minimum that you set in for the referral program.
9. Once the order is completed, go to the referring customer's inbox and wait for the referral completed email to be delivered. 

Once you receive this email, the referral flow is complete!

If you don't want this test order to be part of your data, you can cancel your order on your eCommerce platform.