The RevenueCat Web-to-App Funnels Handbook
A practical playbook for running web-to-app acquisition campaigns with RevenueCat Funnels. This guide covers everything from setting up your funnel and attribution to measuring paid campaign success and influencer and affiliate marketing.
Web-to-app funnels are on the rise, with 41% of top-performing apps now generating web revenue. It’s a natural shift; web funnels smoothly transition users from a web experience into an app, with payment happening in either environment. Compared to a fully in-app acquisition flow, this approach can change the store economics, conversion rates, retention patterns, tracking, and operational work required to scale growth. Not to mention, web-to-app funnels also offer far more room to convey the product's value than the App Store alone.
So if you’re already using (or planning to use) RevenueCat Funnels and want to turn that funnel into a measurable acquisition channel, then this guide is your trusty companion.
Hesitating?
If you haven't decided whether a web-to-app funnel is right for your app, or you're building your first one, start with our web-to-app funnels guide — it covers the pros and cons, plus a blueprint for your first funnel.
How to use this handbook:
This guide covers two acquisition motions that share the same funnel foundation but need different setups, tracking, and creative approaches: paid user acquisition, and influencer or affiliate marketing.
- Part 1: core setup covers everything that’s identical regardless of channel: defining the campaign, tracking mechanics, identity, and measurement.
- Part 2: paid user acquisition lays out how to connect an existing funnel to paid ad platforms like Meta, measure it with or without a mobile measurement partner (MMP), and improve performance with real data.
- Part 3: influencer and affiliate marketing explains how to adapt that same journey for creator and partner traffic, with its own tracking, disclosure, and payout rules.
Start with part one for the fundamentals, then dig into the section that matches what you're launching, or both if you're running multiple channels.
Table of contents
Core setup
Define your campaign before you build the funnel
How to define your audience, promise, proof, offer, and outcome before building a funnel.
Building your web-to-app funnel
A breakdown of each funnel archetype, and how to build yours in RevenueCat Funnels.
Tracking users: URL parameter set up
How to set up URL parameters to track campaigns.
Your funnel tech stack: how to understand what each tool measures
Breaks down what RevenueCat, MMPs, and product analytics each measure, so you know which tools you need.
User identity: connecting the web purchaser to the right app account
Compare three identity handoff methods so every web-to-app funnel purchase ends in seamless access.
Paid user acquisition
Paid user acquisition and web-to-app funnels
Explains how to match ad creative to your funnel and decide when to build a new one.
Create your URL and connect paid acquisition tools
Walks through creating a campaign URL and connecting RevenueCat Funnels to Meta Ads.
Measurement for paid web-to-app campaigns
Explains how to measure paid web-to-app campaigns with or without an MMP.
Validate, launch, and improve
Run a pre-launch check, diagnose weak funnel metrics, and learn where web-to-app funnels hit their limits.
Influencer & affiliate marketing
Influencer and affiliate marketing through web-to-app funnels
Explains how to adapt a funnel journey for creator and affiliate traffic.
Decide how measurement and payout will work
Covers how to separate attribution, discounting, and payout for creator campaigns.
Validate, launch, and improve
Covers how to validate, launch, and troubleshoot a creator-driven funnel campaign.
A successful acquisition campaign, whether it's paid or creator-led, is never as simple as just sending people to a web page. The ad or post, the funnel, checkout, tracking, customer identity, and app handoff all need to work as one connected customer journey.
But it doesn't take a complex setup to get started. You just need your ad platform or partner registry, and RevenueCat.
- Begin with a clear campaign promise
- Edit a funnel template designed for that audience
- Define your success metrics
- Test the complete journey end-to-end
- Launch small and build up, testing as you go
- Use the data to identify your next experiment
That's the real utility of web-to-app funnels: more space to make your case than an app store listing, and the ability to keep improving based on real data — without waiting for yet another App Store Review.
Try RevenueCat Funnels
Unlock flexibility and profit with no-code web-to-app funnels
Related resources
- Read now
Web-to-app funnels 101
Still deciding if a web-to-app funnel fits your app?
- Watch now
Watch the RevenueCat Funnels tutorial
New to building with RevenueCat Funnels?
- Go to Docs
RevenueCat Funnels Documentation
Read the full technical documentation