Do you use a URL Shortener?
Does it add value to your process and what do like/dislike the most about it?
Have you considered that it adds an extra redirect and thus time for your user to get to the destination URL?
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Does it add value to your process and what do like/dislike the most about it?
Have you considered that it adds an extra redirect and thus time for your user to get to the destination URL?
Q1: Yup, I use it primarily for Tweets and sharing links in emails.
Q2: Not really. There's already so much variability in how fast destination URLs load with things like other users on the internet, website traffic, etc., that I can't really see my end user of the shortener (a) noticing that the link shortener is taking time out of their day and (b) caring about the second or two that they lose.
I can perhaps (maybe) see 2 being a problem in cases where you have people cold clicking on links, e.g., linking through from blogs. But in my case, I'm sharing links with people that are already warmed up to the idea of seeing what I'm sharing (they trust me) - so I've had no complaints and don't think it's an issue.
What I do sometimes worry about is if people see the shortened link and think it's a virus (ya know, like those ones that spam email lists). But, maybe that's just a concern in my head.
Thanks for the insights!
No, it is not just you that is quite common. That is why most shorteners have a "bring your own domain" option, then all your short links will be branded with your domain that builds trust over time for your users clicking them.
Do you have a specific url shortener that you use for that? (know there's tons)
edit: I see on your profile you created WarpURL haha
Yes I created WarpURL, mostly as a scratch my own itch problem and I wanted the challenge of building something beyond code. But I optimize for latency aka the fastest URL shortener. I am now exploring if there is a need for this type of product, I am currently here in my journey https://www.rehanvdm.com/journal/retro-2021-07
So yeah I use my own, but know the competition pretty well atm. What are you using? If you are not, what is it you are looking for in a URL Shortener? Based on that I can suggest one for your use case.
Mainly looking at a way to track link clicks while keeping my domain. I'm using https://plausible.io/ for tracking inbound traffic but it doesn't work out well for when we want to do an influencer collab (utm parameters are just too long).
It depends on how much $ you want to spend. https://short.io is one of the only ones I know that enable you to BYOD (Bring Your Own Domain) in the free tier. Depending on the number of links you create, that might be enough for you. After that, it is TinyURLs paid plan that is the cheapest if you want to BYOD.
FYI, I am willing to give a significant discount (to 100% free) on WarpURL if the client falls within my B2B target market. If you like the Demo(https://app.demo.warpurl.net/) and want to chat further, let me know and we can continue to chat about it on email.
Funny that you mentioned short.io, pretty much signed up there an hour ago.
Read through some of the posts you had: https://www.rehanvdm.com/journal/retro-2021-07
Right now we're just ramping up our influencer collabs (3 last week) so likely we'll have less than 10 links/week.
It'll be a pretty long-time before we'd break-even on paid link-tracking, but if the influencer collabs work out would definitely be interested in following up.
Curious to know. The faster page loads seem like a no-brainer for short-links, how come larger services don't bother? Costs?
Mainly cost. They would either have to use a CDN, which gets expensive as some of them charge per click, or they would have to have many servers in different regions which is also expensive.
At the minimum you would need to have a load balancer & reverse proxy and a fleet of servers that auto scale depending on the amount of clicks.
Also seems that most users just don't notice the redirect time. Companies just have not realized that people can actually drop off before even reaching their site, before their page even starts to render.
Gotcha, thanks for the clarification. We spend so much time optimizing page speed for improving conversion rates so kind of surprising.
Literally never noticed that before 😂
Guess that says something about how much I worried about it though 🤷♀️
That is the response I wanted thanks :)
FYI if you are curious, these URL Shorteners add latency depending on user location, I built a tool to visualize it https://warpurl.com/latency-monitor
Great - thanks! I'll check it out!