Thursday 27 August 2009

Short URL Services

URLs (web addresses) can be extremely long! If you are not hyperlinked and can’t cut/paste then the web page may not be visited. People just can't be bothered to walk the walk...


To the rescue came organisations offering a URL Shortner service. There are LOADS of these services and they differ in many ways. You may have heard of the TINY service. For example click on this URL

http://tiny.cc/mrmix you will reach a fantastic book at Amazon, please feel free to buy it!

Do you see what I’ve done? I’ve changed the long 38 symbols...

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0199281963/

to the short 20 symbols...

http://tiny.cc/mrmix

I can track how many people click the tiny link by going to the Tiny web site. (Click on the image to see it better)





Just to prove my point I did the same for bit.ly so try

http://bit.ly/mmix


(Click on the image to see it better)

Take a look at many others at this link

URLShortner compilation

And now google offer one too see

http://goo.gl/

Q. Why is this so good and why is it relevant to metrics?

A. Well there is no restriction on how many aliases I can create at for this one site or for others, and I can use the many other services too. That means I can use different URLS in different campaigns. If I am promoting my book on my business card I can use one, another as an email signature, another I can use in Blogs, another one on my TV ads and so on. This simple device allows me to see the effectiveness of these different modes. In metric-speak this is ATTRIBUTION. I can attribute actions to the initial web page that was served.

Do yourself a favour. Create 20 short URLs ready to use with different campaigns, but make sure that the service you choose allows you to track the visitor numbers. My favoured two are the ones above

http://bit.ly/ and http://www.tiny.cc/

2 comments:

  1. http://at5.us
    -Hide or Short long links
    -Bulk links short @ 1 click
    -Prevent Search Engines
    -Protect with Password
    -Links are easy shared via Twitter, Facebook or email
    -Easy to remember
    -Customize who can see links
    -Edit your links
    -Choose new urls
    -Delete at any time
    -Analytics reports

    http://at5.us

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks that is a neat service you offer - in case anyone missed it go to
    http://at5.us

    ReplyDelete