10-Feature Checklist for Custom URL Shorteners + Which Ones to Choose?

Updated October 6, 2023
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Plugging your social media post with long links can make it look ineffective with letters or signs that take up considerable space. A better alternative for brands is URL shorteners that offer better structure and clarity to build credibility in front of the viewers.

A URL shortener is a holy grail for all marketing efforts, whether you’re a social media manager, entrepreneur, influencer, or business executive. It serves the purpose of quickly condensing any lengthy link to a few characters, making it organized and visually appealing.

Although, how do we choose what makes a good URL shortener? To help you, we’ve compiled a list of the key features to look for in a suitable URL shortener and our top tool recommendations.

Custom URL Shorteners

Image Credit: Unsplash

 

10-Feature Checklist for Custom URL Shorteners

1. Detailed Analysis

Brands require access to comprehensive statistics to determine whether their custom link is doing successfully or not. For this, link shorteners must include analytical statistics showing how your link is doing in terms of impressions, clicks, CTR, and more. Other advanced tools may also deliver demographic data to assess whether the links appeal to the brand’s intended audience.

2. Managing Links

Brands may sometimes wish to amend their URL to alter their web address or reroute the traffic. In such circumstances, access to a URL shortener with link management features offer a great solution. They can help create new and distinctive links, to edit as per the brand’s purpose or parameters. Users can also program links to self-destruct after completion of a specified project or erase once they’re no longer in use.

3. Branded Links

A great technique to draw more consumers to your links is by using custom branding. Short links with your unique domain or subdomain are known as branded links. They help improve your brand identity and assure users that the links they click are memorable and related to the brand.

4. Security

For all intents and purposes, enterprises want excessive security to prevent private data from ending up in the wrong hands. The same applies to link shorteners, where brands don’t want someone to change their links or divert traffic from them to another direction. The finest URL shorteners for businesses, therefore, also offer enterprise-level security.

5. Stability

Nothing is more aggravating than tweeting a link using a short link generator, only to receive complaints that the link is broken because the URL shortening service is offline. For this reason, brands must choose tools that inspire trust and are reliable to use as per industry standards.

6. URL Size

How tiny a URL can be is another issue for many. If the URL shortening service’s domain is small, that is a first step toward reducing URL size. Of course, the “path” section of the URL, or what would typically be the page name on a conventional website, follows the domain name.

 

Image Credit: Unsplash

7. Customization 

Brands can choose to customize a particular URL for various platforms/advertising to determine which ad creative or platform performs better to drive traffic. Furthermore, it is possible to group several links into one, thanks to the bulk modification of links. This method can also enable users to perform A/B testing on microsites or page elements. Based on the adaptation, brands can choose which analytics fare the best for various creatives and platforms.

8. Ability To Share

Social media sites bear information on the brand’s content and the audience’s engagement with specific links. The basic rule implied is that only a particular number of characters can be used for social networking and messaging app posts. While sharing links may require more characters, the reader won’t gain better context. The recommended practice is to use URL shorteners to keep your brand copy and URL within the same character restriction for better engagement.

9. Domain Management

The URL Shortener makes it easier to manage many domains with features including domain management. This is useful for larger companies running numerous ads with different domains.

10. Closure of Services and Disruption

You should be aware that when you use a URL shortening service, your shortened services won’t depend on promoting short URLs for your company or website! By selecting a top-notch URL shortener, you may decide to prevent these types of inconveniences.

Which URL Shorteners to Choose in 2022?

1. Pixelfy

Pixelfy is more than just a short link generator; it can produce over twelve diverse link types, each with a distinct function. Although Pixelfy also offers deep linking services, their expertise lies in adding a retargeting pixel to each shortened link.

A retargeting pixel is used for a brand link to become a tracking link. With this, brands can gather more information on every user that engages with their URL.

You can utilize this data in the future for a variety of objectives, including analysis, remarketing or retargeting, hyper-targeted remarketing, etc.

For Amazon sellers, creating specific URLs is advantageous as it improves their keyword ranking!

Features

  1. It offers real-time data on who clicks on your custom URL(s).
  2. Evaluate different links to see which URL drives more sales for the brand.
  3. Helps track the performance of your custom link for all digital campaigns.

2. Bitly

New York-based Bit.ly is a platform for managing and shortening customized links. You can make custom links that are simple to recognize using it.

With bit.ly, you can access more detailed information about 20 data points, such as geographics and referral channels. This supports your ability to make informed business decisions.

Features

  1. With Bitly link management, you can create, personalize, and manage short links.
  2. Make your custom domain and swap out the bit.ly URL to ensure that all your links are genuine and reliable.

3. Rebrandly

Rebrandly is a URL shortener with valuable features that will assist you in setting up your custom domain or using one you already own. It provides total control over how they function for your company, so it’s more than just a simple way to shorten URLs.

Features:

  1. Manage branded links rapidly to create thousands of fast connections.
  2. Depending on their location, device, browsing language, and other characteristics, you may route traffic to particular landing pages or drive them to your mobile apps using traffic routing.
  3. Add users to your retargeting lists on Facebook, AdWords, Twitter, and other places by firing retargeting pixels directly from your branded links.

Wrapping Things Up

URL shorteners are more complex than they first appear. Shorter links are undoubtedly more user-friendly than their larger counterparts, but no clever marketer should give up the chance to check link analytics.

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