# Unknown Acquisition Source Interview Template

Canonical page: https://waitlist.crany.ai/marketing-templates/unknown-attribution-interview-prompt

By Tangenix. Published 2026-10-23. Category: Acquisition measurement.

Ask new users how they discovered your app without forcing a channel answer or treating their memory as perfect attribution.

## Task

Add qualitative discovery context to incomplete traffic attribution.

## When to use

Use this as an optional question after a genuine interaction or activation when you need to understand the path to discovery that analytics did not capture.

## Choose another approach when

Answering would block product access, you intend to collect browsing history, or you plan to overwrite observed analytics with an unverified recollection.

## Inputs

- The moment at which the question is relevant and optional.
- The analytics observation already available, if any.
- A place to store a short permission-appropriate answer separately from measured source data.

## Template

    Optional question: How did you first come across [app]?
    Follow-up if useful: Do you remember what you were trying to solve at that moment?
    If several steps are mentioned: What happened between first hearing about it and trying it today?
    Acceptable answer: I don’t remember.
    Research note:
    Self-reported first discovery: [participant wording]
    Measured session source: [analytics label or unknown]
    Later touchpoints mentioned: [short summary]
    Confidence limit: [recall uncertainty]
    Do not merge these fields into a single supposedly certain channel.

## Illustrative example

This is not a Crany customer result. Replace example details with verified facts.

    A new user says, “I think someone linked it in a community a few weeks ago, then I searched the name today.”
    Analytics labels the signup session as organic search.
    Record self-reported first discovery as an unspecified community mention and the measured session as organic search. Do not rename the analytics session to “community” or claim that search alone caused the signup.
    A useful follow-up is what task the person wanted to complete when they first noticed the app. It is not a request for their browser history or private group messages.

## How to use

1. Ask in a context where the person can easily skip the question.
2. Capture their wording before offering a list of channels.
3. Store self-report and measured source as distinct evidence and review patterns across both.

## Checks

- The question does not imply that one answer is preferred.
- An unknown answer remains valid.
- No private conversation content or unnecessary identifying detail is requested.

## What to measure

Monitor the share of voluntary responses and the range of discovery paths described. Differences from session analytics are investigation leads, not proof that either system is universally wrong.

## Research and sources

Yale includes questions about discovery paths; Google documents campaign labels. Keeping recalled discovery separate from measured session source is an original editorial recommendation for honest interpretation.

- [Yale: User Interview Example Questions](https://usability.yale.edu/ux/discovery/get-to-know-your-user/user-interviews/user-interview-example-questions) — checked 2026-10-23. Interview structure, current tasks, past experience, alternative workflows and discovery paths.
- [Google Analytics: Collect campaign data with custom URLs](https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/10917952?hl=en) — checked 2026-10-23. Campaign parameter definitions and consistent naming; no attribution or conversion guarantee.

Prepared with AI assistance. Sources support the stated principles; they do not endorse Crany or guarantee performance.

## About Crany

Crany is an AI marketing co-founder in development for software founders and vibe coders. It is designed to strategize, execute approved marketing and improve based on results. These free resources are usable independently of app access. The public waitlist is at https://waitlist.crany.ai/.